As artificial intelligence moves from assisting consumers to acting on their behalf, ACI Worldwide is stepping into the conversation about what that shift means for payments infrastructure.
The global payments technology company announced that Philip Bruno, Chief Strategy and Growth Officer, will speak on the “Agentic Commerce: When AI Starts Buying” panel at the MIT Sloan Fintech Conference on February 20. The session will explore how AI agents are beginning to initiate product discovery, compare options, and execute purchasing decisions across digital ecosystems — potentially redefining how commerce functions.
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The panel will bring together executives from Synchrony, Airwallex, PwC, and NVIDIA to examine how identity, payments, and merchant systems must evolve as software gains greater autonomy. For ACI, the discussion centers on a fundamental question: if AI begins handling transactions, what ensures trust?
Bruno is expected to argue that payments infrastructure and digital wallets will sit at the core of agentic commerce. While AI may transform front-end workflows, he maintains that secure, deterministic systems remain essential beneath the surface.
“As AI becomes an active participant in commerce, the winners will be the companies that embed secure, intelligent wallet experiences directly into the merchant journey,” Bruno said. He emphasized that agent-driven systems depend on three critical pillars: verifiable permission, persistent identity across the transaction lifecycle, and reliable evidence to resolve disputes when issues arise.
The discussion will address early signals of adoption, including zero-click purchasing, interoperable wallet protocols, and emerging agent-driven shopping flows. It will also examine areas that may be overhyped, such as standalone bots and voice-only interfaces that lack integration into secure financial ecosystems. Looking ahead, panelists are expected to debate who will control the consumer’s primary AI agent — and how banks, networks, and merchants can remain visible in an increasingly automated checkout experience.
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Bruno’s perspective reflects ACI’s broader position that while generative AI may disrupt workflow-based applications, core payments infrastructure is likely to be strengthened rather than replaced. AI can enhance fraud detection, improve transaction intelligence, and streamline exception handling, but rules-based systems remain critical for compliance, auditability, and security.
The MIT Sloan Fintech Conference, one of the largest student-run fintech gatherings globally, convenes industry leaders, policymakers, founders, and academics to discuss emerging trends shaping financial services.
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Bruno joined ACI Worldwide in January 2025 after more than two decades at McKinsey & Company, where he served as partner and co-lead of the Global Payments Practice. He holds an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business and a bachelor’s degree in international relations from the University of Pennsylvania.
As AI begins to transition from assistant to buyer, conversations like this signal a larger shift: commerce may soon be negotiated as much by algorithms as by humans — and the infrastructure behind it will matter more than ever.
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