Two of the most consequential trends in payments are converging as Affirm and Klarna begin working with Stripe to allow AI agents to initiate buy now, pay later purchases. The integration relies on Stripe’s Shared Payment Tokens, which enable AI-assisted shopping without exposing sensitive payment credentials.
In a blog post, Viraj Gupta, Product Manager for Cards Vault at Stripe, said the system supports both agentic network tokens and BNPL tokens within a single integration. He added that merchants offering BNPL through Stripe can see revenue gains of up to 14%, along with higher conversion rates and average order values.
A Defensive Position
Affirm and Klarna together serve nearly 150 million users worldwide. Still, the more compelling reason for partnering with Stripe may be a desire not to be sidelined as the payments ecosystem evolves.
In that sense, adoption is a defensive move as agentic commerce starts to take off. BNPL providers don’t want shoppers locked out of installment options simply because a bot, rather than a human, is making the purchase.
“You could assume that the same percentage of buyers who use BNPL today will want to use it with agentic commerce,” said Don Apgar, Director of Merchant Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research. “Secondarily, nobody can use BNPL if those payments options aren’t available in agentic commerce.”
Categories Ripe for Agentic AI
Agentic commerce remains a small slice of the market, but Apgar’s research highlights several retail categories where shopping bots could have an impact.
Commoditized goods such as paper towels or dish soap, for example, involve little brand differentiation and are often purchased primarily on price. For gift givers, an AI agent could narrow choices based on details about the recipient. And travel sites like Trivago and Expedia already aggregate and compare options. Any of these categories could be ripe for BNPL-enabled agentic purchases.
“A sample prompt could be: ‘Find and purchasethe highest-rated office chair with the best back support that costs less than $400, can be delivered within 10 days, and I can pay for in four installments with no interest,’” Apgar said. “BNPL and payment attributes can actually be a purchase requirement, along with product attributes.”
