London Fintech Podcast
00:15:53 · Rohit Mishra
[00:15:53] S0: Is it... Tony, I I would say that removing friction is a is a... Actually, I don't why we talk a lot about finite games or infinite games. Removing friction is an infinite game. So there shall always be a little more friction that we can keep chipping away at. I think the largest place for... I I... I'd frame it in two ways. So if an agent is referring you to the merchant's storefront and then you are on the storefront, you... You're seeing more details about the brand, I think that flow is is working very well. There's always more more work we can do to bring more trust into those transactions. But if you're letting the agent... You're saying, hey. I want to get a gift for my niece, and please make sure that... Please get me something by this Saturday. And you're just letting the agent go traverse, find the right products based on your taste, and actually put... Purchase the transaction and and complete the transaction. That, I think, there's a lot more work to do to bring the right level of trust into that kind of transaction where the agent is fully delegate... Delegated and and and doing an end to end purchase. And I think what's the friction that that that remains there is both from a consumer perspective, but I would also say from a merchant perspective, can you trust the transaction? Is the buyer really sure about what the buyer is buying? If they don't like the product, how does... How do disputes and chargebacks work, and who holds liability? Is it on the consumer? Is it on the consumer's bank? Is it on the merchant? And I think those are things that... Where as as an industry together, we we have to do more work to bring more trust into the into the transaction on both angles, both from a consumer angle that they are... They will get the same protections that they are used to, but also from a merchant angle who won't really participate in this in this complete new modality of commerce, but want to make sure that if they are doing things right, they don't end up holding the bag on disputes and chargebacks. So I think I think there's a lot more work here on trust that we have to keep we have to keep doing. And then beyond trust, what have we... What we have always seen... And and you and The UK, we recently launched our Shop Pay installments product there.
00:18:17 · Rohit Mishra
Is right now a lot of the work we are doing on agent tech is on the traditional card transaction, but how do we make sure that all the new... All the diverse ways that buyers like to pay installments is one of the one of one of the key ways, and all the other local payment method schemes around the world, how do all of those work well with agent tech so that buyers continue to have the flexibility of payment choice that they that they expect? Their loyalty works as they expect. They have the same access to being able to use gift cards or store credit or discounts. And I think as the experience becomes more wider and more complete, that will drive more trust and and and that that will continue to help us accelerate it into commerce.
00:19:04 · Tony Clark
[00:19:04] S1: There's a lot there, Rohit. So I think the core theme was trust, and I want to just ask you about that. There's also quite a bit you started to talk about about how to make it work, so we'll come on to that. But trust, your own holiday retail report, I I understand, said over half of people are comfortable letting AI recommend. 41% would let the AI build their shopping cart, but only 28% would trust it to actually complete the purchase. So, I mean, I'm sure if you'd run that stat a year ago, the numbers would have been way lower. There was almost no agentic commerce. So as you said, the curve is exponential. But trust, how do we build trust? I mean, that must be a, you know, if not the most important one of the one of the most important things that Shopify is focused on here because it's... Trust underpins the adoption. But what do you need to do in the shopping experience to to build that trust?
00:19:56 · Rohit Mishra
[00:19:56] S0: Yeah. So from trust in the shopping experience happens in in in in a few different ways. So I will... Let's think about what happens when you are considering a product and then... And trust you need there versus what happens once you have decided, okay. I want to... I do like this particular product. I want... I would love to buy that. Upfront, I think the most important part of trust is just having access to a lot of products. Like, you want to buy things where you are confident that you and, hence, your agent has access to the widest variety of products that it is looking at and making sure that is... That it is surfacing the right products for you. That's where work that we have... Things like making sure that the catalog that the agent is working through is really large and diverse becomes really important. And then we'll talk about some of the work that Shopify is doing here, but in this area, which will sound... Which will seem very congruent with the problems we are talking about here. But it's access to a catalog, the richness of the catalog. Are you seeing the right information? Do you have the right attributes of the product that your age... That your agent can reason about, that you can reason about with your agent? And then as you move further down the funnel, that's where, for example, over 55% of consumers who come to our storefronts in The UK already are using Shop Pay. So you want their agent to be able to give you the same method that you are used to using, the methods that bring bring you trust and confidence when you are buying on the Internet, the same thing needs to... Those same methods need to be available to you within the agentic interface. That's a large part of trust. And then there there is more work here to be done for sure on how do protections work, making sure that there is clarity for the consumer that if they are using their credit card for... On an agent, the the protections and rewards that they expect on... When using that credit card, that apply irrespective of the format. And then that's where some of the agent tokenization work that I talked about earlier with card networks become so important. And and and we are...
00:22:10 · Rohit Mishra, Tony Clark
And we're very we're very hopeful that as we keep chipping away at these different ways of trust, both in the commerce part of the journey as well as in the payments part of that journey, When you... When we run this survey six months from now, significant... The numbers will continue to significantly increase. I think it's like... If you asked me, as you said, a year back, hey. What percent of users do you think consumers will be like, yeah. Agents go complete this transaction for me. I would have said even single digits is... Would be would be an exceptional. The fact that over a quarter of users already are comfortable, I think is a is a great outcome of how well agents have been doing, how well the ecosystem is is doing to create this new form of commerce. But I think a long way to go here, but signs are really good right now on that things are moving in the right direction. [00:23:05] S1: So information, choice, familiarity, control risk management, so all... Those are all part of it.
00:23:05 · Tony Clark, Rohit Mishra
[00:23:05] S1: So information, choice, familiarity, control risk management, so all... Those are all part of it. [00:23:13] S0: Yeah. And and I think the... Again, to make sure that entrepreneurs are as successful as large marketplaces and retailers are, it's important that the trust deficit that you may have because you're dealing with a new brand. Platforms like Shopify, the work that we are doing with Shopify and Shop Pay, we're trying to bridge that trust deficit by saying, hey. Here's the wallet. That wallet is really secure. It has all your information. It's a really seamless purchase experience. And once you buy, the same... You will get a notification in our app. You can track your order all the way down to your doorstep. And I think that end to end experience, you repeat that as it's many, many, many transactions. And and I think that builds the trust. And what we have to make sure now is that we are working really... Working well with many of the agent tech platforms to make sure Shop Pay is available on those platforms as well as that the full end to end user journey of consideration, buying with Shop Pay, tracking the Shop app, that works consistently. [00:24:17] S1: Yeah. And that's a nice link to talking about how you enable agentic commerce. So can you talk me through what do you have to change in that transaction workflow when there's an agent in the middle to make that work?