Mastering the new rules of checkout
As digital wallets, alternative payment methods and AI-driven commerce continue to evolve, ;the checkout experience is becoming a competitive differentiator.
Customers expect flexibility and ease. Merchants expect simplicity, scale and strong ;conversion performance. Meeting both expectations is where checkout mastery begins.
Checkout mastery was the topic of our recent webinar, ;The new rules of checkout: Personalization, choice and speed, ;featuring two of Visa’s digital acceptance product leaders: Bryan Carroll and James Bolton.
The conversation covered key topics from ;orchestrating payment methods ;by market and customer, to the ;growing role of network tokens, biometrics, and passkeys ;in reducing friction and improving authorization rates – for example, fraud rates reduced by 50%1 ;compared to SMS one-time passcodes.
A common thread throughout the sessions was that improving checkout is not simply about offering more payment options. To master checkout, businesses should also create experiences that are relevant to the customer, optimized for the market, simple to manage, and strong enough to build trust over time.
Bryan and James also discussed the hot topics like agentic commerce and AI-driven purchases, and how these new channels impact the checkout experience.
They also answered quite a few questions! Below, we’ve compiled their answers to questions asked during both the Europe and North America sessions.
The core takeaway: To manage this increasing complexity, focus on meeting your customers wherever they are today – without adding unnecessary friction during checkout.
Watch the webinar on-demand ;here.
Whether you’re expanding into new regions, evaluating unified checkout, preparing for agent-driven commerce, or simply looking to improve conversion and loyalty, our team is ;ready to connect.
On tokenization
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Are network tokens required for agentic commerce?
Network tokens are not strictly required today, as many agentic commerce experiences still rely on PAN-based or form-fill transactions. However, Network tokens can play an important role for scaling agentic commerce. They allow payment credentials to be stored securely, automatically updated, and reused across merchants, devices, and channels. This can make payments more secure, and ;personalized ;based on each customer.
In agent-powered and unified checkout experiences, tokens can reduce friction, improve authorization rates, enable consumer authentication, and help establish issuer trust. Over time, as agentic commerce adoption grows, tokens will increasingly underpin these experiences.
What are the benefits of network tokens?
Network tokens have benefits such as higher authorization rates, reduced fraud, and improved customer experience. Adoption continues to increase across wallets, Click to Pay, and tokenized checkout flows.
Read more about unlocking growth for your digital commerce with Visa’s Token Service ;here.
On agentic commerce
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What do bots or AI agents need for a smooth checkout experience?
Agents require trusted access to payment credentials, explicit consumer permission, and built-in security and authentication. Tokenization plays a critical role by enabling transactions without exposing sensitive card details.
Network tokens also provide guardrails by binding credentials to specific purchases, ensuring agents are properly authenticated, authorized, and limited to approved actions. This enables secure, seamless agent-driven transactions compared to traditional human checkout flows.
What do bots or AI agents need for a smooth checkout experience?
Agents require trusted access to payment credentials, explicit consumer permission, and built-in security and authentication. Tokenization plays a critical role by enabling transactions without exposing sensitive card details and ensuring that agents are properly authenticated and authorized.
Network tokens also provide guardrails by binding credentials to specific purchases, ensuring agents are properly authenticated, authorized, and limited to approved actions.
In agentic commerce, who owns the customer relationship?
The relationship remains shared. Consumers continue to choose brands and merchants, even if agents facilitate transactions. Merchants, platforms, and networks each maintain part of the customer relationship.
How will agentic purchases work in regulated environments such as Europe with 3DS or open banking requirements?
Network tokens can be provisioned to signal that a transaction originates from an agentic provider and that authentication has already occurred. This allows downstream systems to recognize the transaction as authenticated without triggering additional step-up flows such as ;Visa 3DS.
How will consent and authorization work for AI agents?
Tokens can be provisioned at runtime for specific purchases, bound by explicit consumer consent. This helps ensure guardrails are in place to prevent unintended transactions and manage risk.
How might agentic commerce impact chargebacks?
While it is still early, bounded network tokens with explicit consumer consent could reduce chargebacks by ensuring purchases are authorized correctly. Over time, this may simplify dispute processes and reduce overall chargeback volume.
On enhancing the checkout experience
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What separates merchants that are truly improving checkout conversion from those that are just adding more payment options?
High-performing merchants focus on orchestration rather than volume. They use data to surface the right payment methods for each market and customer and to align authentication expectations by region, as well as to balance speed, security, and performance.
Rather than overwhelming customers with choice, these merchants optimize performance through intelligent payment presentation, localized experiences, and continuous testing. This combination of orchestration, market relevance, and performance optimization differentiates top performers.
How do biometrics and passkeys help speed checkout and reduce fraud?
Biometrics such as fingerprint or facial recognition enable fast authentication without passwords or codes.
Solutions like Visa Passkey provide a standardized, low-friction authentication method across merchants and devices, reducing reliance on one-time passwords and minimizing checkout friction, including within regulated flows such as 3DS.
Read more about streamlining your checkout experience with biometrics and passkeys ;here.
How does checkout experience play into loyalty?
A fast, reliable, and frictionless checkout experience builds confidence and trust, which drives repeat usage. Secure credentials, network tokens, and account updater services keep payment details current, making repeat purchases easier and reinforcing customer loyalty.
How should checkout metrics be used to optimize performance?
Merchants should track abandonment, authorization rates, usage rates, and decline reasons. Insights from these metrics can help guide optimization efforts such as tokenization adoption, payment button ordering, and A/B testing.
How do digital and in-person checkout experiences continue to converge?
QR codes, tokenization, and digital wallets are blending e-commerce and physical experiences, bringing authorization rates closer together and simplifying omnichannel checkout journeys.
On choosing payment methods
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If I’m expanding into a new region, should I add preferred local payment methods early, even before they become a major share of transactions?
Yes. Not offering preferred local payment methods can skew ROI analysis and underrepresent true market opportunity.
Merchants should enable local methods early to test performance, monitor metrics such as usage rates, authorization rates, and decline reasons, before committing to large development efforts. Platforms that allow new payment methods to be switched on make experimentation more efficient and lower risk.
How should merchants think about local payment methods when expanding into new markets?
Offering the right local payment methods is critical for success in new markets. Merchants should monitor performance metrics such as usage rates, authorization rates, and decline reasons to ;improve their checkout experience ;and help maximize ROI.
How easy is it to integrate new payment methods into a payment stack?
Modern payment platforms are designed to reduce complexity by supporting multiple payment methods through a single integration. This standardization allows merchants to test, launch, and scale new payment options quickly while relying on shared infrastructure and centralized reporting.
Should merchants prioritize maximum choice or intelligent limitation of payment options?
Intelligent limitation is more effective. Presenting only relevant payment options by market and customer segment improves trust and conversion while reducing cognitive friction.
On compliance and regulations
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What implications does Basel III have for checkout and payments?
Basel III does not directly regulate checkout, but it increases banks’ sensitivity to risk. As a result, secure, predictable, tokenized, and authenticated checkout flows are increasingly favored because they reduce risk without adding friction.
On Unified Checkout
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What are the biggest challenges merchants face today that Unified Checkout is designed to address?
Merchants face increasing complexity from supporting cards, wallets, alternative payments, and regional differences. Unified Checkout addresses these challenges by consolidating integrations into a single ;connected payment experience ;that simplifies orchestration, localization, security, and ongoing maintenance.
Does Unified Checkout support ACH and other non-card payment methods?
Yes. ;Unified Checkout ;supports ACH and eCheck and can be used either standalone or alongside other payment methods through a single integration.
If a merchant already supports multiple payment methods, what additional value does Unified Checkout provide?
Unified Checkout consolidates multiple integrations into one, reducing maintenance, simplifying upgrades, and centralizing orchestration while preserving existing payment capabilities.
Read more about building flexible checkout experiences ;here.
How should merchants think about compliance from GDPR to Basel III?
While regulations vary, the consistent takeaway is that secure, predictable, and low-friction checkout experiences align best with regulatory expectations and banking risk models.
For instance, Basel III doesn’t directly regulate checkout, but it increases banks’ sensitivity to risk. As a result, secure, predictable, tokenized, and authenticated checkout flows are increasingly favored because they reduce risk without adding friction.
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As wallets, alternative payments, and AI‑driven experiences continue to reshape commerce, the winning approach stays the same: meet customers where they are, with checkout experiences that feel fast, familiar, and secure. The complexity can live behind the scenes, so the moment that matters most stays simple, scalable, and built to convert.
1 ;Analysis based VisaNet data globally, from July-December 2023, comparing biometric authentication to step-up through OTP sent over text message
