AI set to redefine shopping and payments, Affirm CEO says

By Hannah Lang

(Reuters) -Max Levchin, CEO and co-founder of Affirm, which offers buy now, pay later plans, said artificial intelligence is poised to transform shopping by taking over human tasks and making financial products more transparent.

AI agents will soon be able to instantly weed out products with prohibitively high interest rates or late fees, forcing businesses to rethink fee structures, Levchin said at the Reuters Momentum AI Finance conference in New York on Tuesday.

"I think we're headed for a future where we have a profound elimination, for lack of a better term, of business models that are designed to prey on stupidity, or lack of attention ... because it's all going to get done by the bots," he said. 

Agentic AI needs minimal human intervention to make decisions and is widely considered the next iteration of generative AI. AI agents will soon shop and pay on behalf of consumers, and recommend the best financial products to accommodate their purchases, Levchin predicted.

"My dumb, young, naive self in college signing up for a deferred interest credit card would have never known to read the fine print," said Levchin, a PayPal co-founder.

"But even if I did, I would have been lost in the morass within seconds because it's deliberately obscure. AI does not have a problem with that. It can read the finest of prints, it will find the 'gotcha.'"

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) providers like Affirm and Klarna offer loans that shoppers repay in installments spread over as many as 36 months, although the most common plan has four payments.

BNPL exploded in popularity as the COVID-19 pandemic forced more shoppers online and has grown rapidly, driving $82.4 billion in online spending in 2024, up 9.9% from 2023, according to Adobe Analytics.

Levchin outlined Affirm's approach to AI in an August letter to shareholders, arguing that the company was "built for this," with products that can be integrated into chatbots, internet browsers and digital wallets.

The shift toward agentic shopping will create winners and losers across retail and payments, with companies that embrace composable, adaptive solutions positioned to thrive, he added.

Among other large companies pivoting towards autonomous AI, Walmart unveiled plans in July to roll out a suite of AI-powered "super agents" to help customers and streamline operations. The retailer is betting on AI to drive its e-commerce growth, aiming for online sales to account for 50% of its total sales within five years, Walmart has said.

(Reporting by Hannah Lang in New York; Editing by Richard Chang)