AI-Powered Commerce: Transforming Cybersecurity, Data Analytics, and Payment Systems

Speaker A: Welcome to Payments Beats, the podcast where we uncover the beat that powers the world of payments. Hosted by Payments Consulting Network, we'll give you comprehensive insights from global industry experts. Stay tuned to uncover new perspectives and trends and be part of the conversation.

Speaker B: Hi everyone and thank you for joining us on Payment Speaks. Today we're going to be speaking with Donald Ong, the Senior Vice President Services Business Development Asia Pacific for MasterCard. And our topic today is AI powered commerce, transforming cybersecurity, Data analytics and payment systems. Firstly, I'll introduce myself. My name is Liz Beggs. I'm um, the Chief Operating Officer for Payments Consulting Network and Merchant Advisory. And we have today here with us Donald Ong. Welcome Donald.

Speaker C: Thanks for having me, Liz. It's absolutely great to be here.

Speaker B: Yeah, I'm really looking forward to the discussion because I really think that MAVDACART are doing some really innovative things around this agenic commerce and AI powered technology which is obviously on the tip of everyone's tongues these days. So firstly, Donald, can you tell me about your role as Senior vice president at MasterCard?

Speaker C: Absolutely. I lead business development for MasterCard Services businesses across Asia Pacific. And so when you think about MasterCard services, that's really all about enabling our customers to make commerce smarter, make commerce more secure and make commerce more personal. And we do this with our unique proprietary data. We combine that with artificial intelligence, with technology and of course our domain expertise, helping customers to make smarter decisions, grow customer engagement and manage risk more effectively. Our teams, they work closely with customers across the financial services sector and the retail community to navigate, as you mentioned, the increasingly complex business environment and solve real world challenges. For example, reimagining new experiences such as agent E commerce, using data to grow customer lifetime value, or tackling rising threats like AI enabled fraud, scams and cyber attacks.

Speaker B: That's uh, a pretty full agenda I can imagine.

Speaker C: Absolutely.

Speaker B: Yeah. So uh, look, I see that MasterCard will be opening an AI center of Excellence based in Singapore later this year, focusing on AI powered commerce, cybersecurity and data, uh, analytics. What can people expect to see there?

Speaker C: We're super excited with that initiative. The mastercard Asia Pacific AI center of Excellence is all about turning AI leadership into real world impact, helping the region scale AI powered commerce with trust. Mastercard has been recognized globally for AI leadership and transparency. And so our new AI center of Excellence right here in Singapore builds on that foundation by bringing those capabilities closer to our partners here in Asia Pacific. The COE will anchor our next phase of innovation in areas such as the gente commerce experiences and AI enabled fraud scams and cyber risk management. It will be a hub for co creation, for collaboration with regulators, banks, fintechs and merchants to leverage artificial intelligence to solve for local challenges and opportunities in Asia Pacific markets. Now privacy and trust at uh, scale will be key design principles ensuring that AI enabled innovations are secure, they are responsible and commercially scalable.

Speaker B: Great. And will this be open to the public Donald, or is it going to be really for your partners and customers?

Speaker C: Yes. So we are a B2B2C organization and enterprise and so we work with regulators, banks, fintechs and enterprises and bring them together into the new hub, uh, to co create towards the opportunities and challenges that AI presents.

Speaker B: Excellent. Now MasterCard has taken a significant step to expand AI powered payment systems in Southeast Asia. You've rolled out agentic transactions, meaning authenticated transactions initiated by artificial intelligence across multiple markets including Singapore and Malaysia. Can you explain the benefits of this new functionality in particular for merchants and consumers?

Speaker C: We see agentic commerce as more than just about AI, uh, agents helping consumers to make purchases. For us, it's a complete paradigm shift for how commerce will happen. So if you think about the past, commerce was fairly simple and straightforward. You visit a physical store, you pick out an item that you like, you touch it, you feel it, and if you're happy to make that purchase, off you go. Access to goods and services fairly limited to the stores that you could visit. And so the power set really with emergence in today's globalized economy enabled by E commerce, that power has shifted to the and so the consumer has a lot more choice. And the entire world's product catalog is online now and consumers can shop for anything, anytime and anywhere. But that explosion of choice has come with an explosion of noise as well. As retailers compete for the consumer's increasingly short attention span in a small digital panel that we know as our phones. In agentic commerce, the consumer gains superpowers with AI agents handling all the hard work of filtering through all that noise. In ajent e commerce, the consumer just expresses intent and preferences to his or her AI. And the AI agent then interacts with hundreds of other AI agents out there to fulfill that intent within the consumers preferences and parameters. Now for the retailer, it's a completely new ball game. Retailers now have to win over not just the consumer, but his AI as well. But the AI is not quite the same as the consumer. It relies on machine readable data, it has no emotional connection with brands, it doesn't care about advertising, and it absolutely hates friction. Anything that gets in the agent's way of fulfilling the task, it's going to find a way around it. There's also a lot of downstream implications to think about. How do you know that this AI agent represents the customer? How do you know the agent understood the customer's intent correctly? Or worse still, what happens when there's fraud perpetrated not by the human, but by the AI agent? And so that's what MasterCard's agent pay technology addresses. Our, uh, tokenization technology enables safe and secure agent E commerce transactions. We have know your agent protocols to ensure that agents are really those authorized by the customer to act on their behalf and that they are operating within the parameters defined by the customer. And our verifiable intent API creates a tamper proof cryptographic record. And so there's a clear audit trail of the customer's intent and the transaction outcome to enable dispute resolution. Agentic commerce. Let me just close with this that it is not a theoretical future. It is already here and MasterCard is at the forefront of this revolution. We have just been recognized by Juniper Research as the global leader in agent E commerce. And here in Asia Pacific, we have gone live with many partners across Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore and many other markets. And of course Asia Pacific with its young digital and AI native population. We expect to be primary adopters of agent E commerce. And we expect that by 2030, more than 30% of e commerce transactions in this region will be agentic.

Speaker B: That's a great accolade to get that recognition for MasterCard. Congratulations. You talked about, um, tokenization and know your agent. Do you want to just give the audience a little bit more detail around that?

Speaker C: Yes. So know your agent protocols very much similar to know your customer. So as a business, as a financial institution, it's really important to make sure that agents are registered, they are known to the ecosystem, to be able to operate, uh, agentic transactions in the ecosystem. And so we enable that by setting up the protocols and enabling agents to be registered and recognized in the ecosystem and that the mandate from the customer is clear as well in terms of the parameters that are defined by the customer that the agent needs to abide within. Right. And so that's made transparent to everybody operating in the ecosystem so that you, as a merchant, as a business, you recognize this agent, you understand what the agent is allowed to do by the customer and what they are not allowed to do based on the customer's consent. And so that creates traceability, that creates trust in the ecosystem.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think that trust element is so important, especially for the Consumers in today's world in relation to payments, what cutting edge changes should merchants expect and what should they be doing now to prepare for?

Speaker C: So we see commerce as transforming to become more seamless and intelligent merchants. They need to win the moments that matter. And we see a few key battlegrounds. The first is to win the moment of discovery. In the age of agent e commerce merchants need to make it easy for AI agents to find and surface your offers and products to the consumer. And so that means embracing strategies like GEO instead of SEO and designing agentic native customer journeys to enhance discoverability and reduce friction. The second is to win the moment of relevance. And that's all about using data and AI to hyper personalize offers, creatives and messages that are contextual and relevant in real time. Relevance also goes beyond the immediate product sale. It is also about being embedded across the customer's daily life. Meeting customers where they are with holistic loyalty propositions through strategic partnerships. And third, uh, is the payment experience. Delivering trusted and frictionless checkout experiences, friction ridden checkout, declined transactions, fraud and cumbersome dispute processes. All of that erodes trust and brand preference and deter repeat purchases. And so at MasterCard we are focused on helping our merchant partners win the moments that matter. For example, our office network connects merchants with billions of consumers and we use AI and data to deliver targeted and hyper personalized offers and experiences to end consumers. Our ah, marketing services capabilities help customers maximize impact, optimize audience targeting, creative strategy, media mix and data driven impact measurement. We're also helping merchant partners to deliver seamless payment experiences while enhancing trust. For example tokenizing transactions for greater security, biometric passkeys for stronger authentication and AI enabled fraud and cyber intelligence tools to secure the customer, the transaction and the ecosystem. And so in this new landscape, merchants that stay ahead, they are going to be those that deliver seamless, intelligent and trusted experiences.

Speaker B: It's a lot for them, isn't it? And I think they're all working very hard to get their AI components right to be able to service the consumer because they are getting a lot more savvy these days, as you quite rightly point out. I noticed that you spoke at Commerce Reimagined event a little while ago and you discussed the rise of intention of the intention economy where AI agents act on behalf of consumers to fuel their intent, making shopping smarter, faster and frictionless. And I know you discussed this briefly but with these changes retailers must win over not just the consumer but their AI. How do you think that retailers should prepare for this and stay ahead of the game.

Speaker C: That's a great question. In the intention economy we see that retailers need to be discoverable, relevant and trusted not just by consumers, but also by the agent acting on their behalf. As AI agents take on more of the decision making and execution, retailers need to ensure that their products, pricing and data are structured in ways that the AI agent can easily interpret and act on. Merchants can also exploring developing their own AI agents that interacts with the consumer initiated AI agents adding a layer of intelligence to the machine readable data to enable effective discoverability. As AI agents could be interacting with hundreds of AI agents to fulfill the customer's intent. Designing and implementing agentic native journeys, that's going to be critical to minimize friction. Trust will be absolutely key. Merchants and consumers need to trust that the intent is captured correctly and the AI agents did not make a mistake or go rogue. For example, I could ask AI to get for my son a pair of air Jordan version 9 sneakers on a size 8, but I might end up receiving instead version 8 on a size 9 because the AI interpreted my intent and the merchant data incorrectly. And so technologies that enables that trust, such as our tokenization technology, our uh, know your agent protocols and our uh, verifiable intent APIs, they help to deliver that trust at scale. Now I know we are speaking a lot about the consumer retail experience, but agentic AI is also expected to be transformative for retailers from an operational standpoint with always on agents working across fragmented tools to provide insights, intelligence and recommendations, optimizing inventory management, supplier payments, cash flow and working capital. And we recently launched a virtual C suite as one example of how agentic AI can power those benefits.

Speaker B: There's a lot for them, as I said, to get their head around and the technology as you say is there today, it's already operational. So they do need to jump on board fairly quickly to get that market share or continue to maintain that market share I'd imagine so. MasterCard has also announced its intent to acquire BVNK, which is a digital currency bank providing leading stablecoin based infrastructure. How do you see digital currencies changing transactions in particular cross border? Because I think there's a really good need there. And where do you think this adoption life uh cycle is currently at?

Speaker C: Digital currencies have the potential to make cross border payments faster, more transparent and more efficient, especially in areas where traditional systems face friction. And so stablecoins in particular has emerged as a critical bridge between traditional fiat currency and the digital asset ecosystem and it is scaling rapidly. In 2025, stablecoin transactions were $33 trillion and is expected to double by 2030. It is powering use cases like crypto trading, cross border B2B payments and remittances. New use cases like payroll for example, are emerging as well as tech startups, small businesses and webtree. Companies that rely on remote employees and gig workers that are distributed around the world prefer to use stablecoins for their payroll. And there's several reasons for this, I think. First, it's a reliable store of value. Unlike crypto, the price is stable and it can be converted to fiat which offers liquidity. Second, it is cheaper and faster. Payments are uh, instant and 24, seven, you don't have to wait for banking hours or wait for payment instructions to travel across the correspondent banking network. And you don't have to wait for settlement and the exchange of value through batch files days later. And third, unlike fiat money, which is done, digital currencies like stablecoins are smart. They are programmable because it's a digital token. You can actually code logic into it like smart contracts. And so for example, if you have to pay a, uh, remote worker a daily salary of a hundred dollars weekdays only and only for the next six months, that logic can actually be coded into digital tokens. And so as new forms of value emerge, the rails for value to travel across the ecosystem are uh, multiplying as well. We used to only have in the financial services world interbank transfers, but now we have account to account rails, we have wallet rails, we have card rails, and now digital currency rails as well. And so that adds a lot of fragmentation and complexity. Interoperability then becomes absolutely key so that consumers and businesses can benefit from smarter and faster economic transactions, but with minimal friction as well. That's where MasterCard's role comes in. We enable customers to become trusted orchestrators of traditional and new forms of value like digital currencies. And we enable that value to move and to exchange seamlessly and safely across an increasingly multi rail environment. I would describe the life cycle as moving from experimentation into practical deployment in specific use cases with the next stage really focused on responsible scaling.

Speaker B: Yeah, and look at that instant transaction capability and the visibility in these digital currencies which is attracting those B2B cross border and payroll. Uh, was there a way that payrolls become quite a thing in digital currencies? But it does make sense, doesn't it?

Speaker C: Absolutely, yeah.

Speaker B: Look, I think we're almost running out of time, but is there anything else that you wanted to share with the audience around? Some of MasterCard's initiative going on. I think we've covered a lot. You think you've got a lot on your plate.

Speaker C: Yeah. It's been a great conversation. Thank you so much, Liz. I think just in closing, what's clear is that we are entering a new phase of commerce that's more intelligent, it's going to be more seamless and increasingly driven by artificial intelligence. The opportunity is absolutely huge, but it will depend on how well we build and embed trust into these systems and the ecosystems. Right from the start. Payments will become invisible, AI agents will be critical enablers, and digital currencies will unlock faster and smarter economy transactions. But at the heart of it, the fundamentals don't change. People and businesses still need confidence that economic transactions are secure, systems are accountable, and innovation is creating real value. And so that to us is the opportunity ahead to partner and co create to make commerce faster, smarter, safer and more trusted.

Speaker B: Uh, that's awesome. Look, thank you so much for your time and your insights, Donald, and thank you to everyone listening to our podcast. Make sure that you follow us on LinkedIn and get notified about the next episodes. And if you have any questions or comments about today's topic, you can leave a comment or message us on our LinkedIn page as well. It's been great, Donald, and hope to talk to you again soon.

Speaker C: Awesome. Thanks, Lindsay.

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