The Rise of Agentic Commerce: How AI Is Redefining Payments in the MENA Region
- Sally Hanekom
- Oct 15
- 5 min read
Imagine a world where buying, paying, and reordering happen without a single click, where intelligent assistants handle the details safely, instantly, and on your terms.
That future is closer than you think. Agentic Commerce is here, and it’s set to transform how businesses and consumers interact, pay, and build trust online.
What Is Agentic Commerce?
Agentic Commerce refers to AI systems, often called agents - that can act autonomously on behalf of users.
Instead of searching, comparing, and checking out manually, a user might simply say:
“Order more coffee beans for delivery before 10 a.m. tomorrow.”
The AI agent understands the intent, compares merchants, selects a trusted one, completes the payment, and confirms delivery, all in a few seconds.
In this new model, AI becomes the customer’s digital delegate, capable of discovering products, negotiating terms, and executing transactions within user-defined permissions.
This is a natural evolution from voice commerce and personalised payments into a world of AI-powered, programmable payments.
AI-First Commerce
AI adoption is accelerating at an unprecedented pace, with the global AI agents market exploding from $7.6 billion in 2025 to a projected $50 billion by 2030 , and payments sit at the center of this transformation. Industry analysts forecast that 95% of online commerce will flow through AI agents by 2030, creating an urgent need for payment infrastructure that can support autonomous transactions (Grand View Research, 2024).
Major players including Mastercard, Stripe, Google, and OpenAI are leading the charge, with over 60 organizations collaborating on open protocols like the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) and Agent Payments Protocol (AP2). These initiatives establish frameworks for secure, traceable, and interoperable payments between AI agents and merchants, ensuring every transaction is transparent, reversible, and governed by user consent (OpenAI Developers, 2025).
For businesses, the opportunity is massive. With 33% of eCommerce enterprises expected to integrate agentic AI by 2028, up from less than 1% today, those who adapt their payment infrastructure early will become "agent-ready": visible and discoverable to the AI systems that will soon power billions of consumer interactions. The question isn't whether to prepare for AI commerce, but whether you'll be ready before your competitors.
Programmable Payment Layers
At the heart of this shift is the programmable payment stack, a layered architecture that defines how agents execute payments on behalf of users:
Identity Layer: Establishes verified digital identities and links them to payment credentials and permissions.
Budget Layer: Enables users to set predefined limits, spending caps, or categories for autonomous transactions (e.g., “no more than $200 per grocery order”).
Approval Layer: Defines when human intervention is required, offering configurable oversight before high-value or unusual transactions.
Payment Option Layer: Allows the agent to choose the most efficient and cost-effective payment method — whether card, account-to-account, wallet, or tokenized rail — based on user preferences and merchant integrations.
As outlined in Mastercard’s Agentic Payments Signals Report, these programmable layers will become critical in creating safe, scalable, and compliant agent ecosystems that protect users and merchants alike.
Open AI’s Open-Source Protocols
Meanwhile, OpenAI and Stripe’s early integration offers a glimpse into how agentic payments are starting to work in real life. Their solution currently requires multiple user interactions — confirmation prompts, verification steps, and human approvals — to build trust and prevent misuse. Over time, these interactions will fade into the background, becoming invisible as confidence and regulatory frameworks evolve.
Crucially, the OpenAI approach is built on open-source protocols, meaning it can be globally deployed and localized by trusted payment providers. This allows access to regional payment schemes and local rails, unlike Mastercard’s pilot rollout, which remains limited to the U.S. for now.
Towards Accountability, Intent and Authorization
As agentic transactions grow, questions of trust and compliance will take center stage. Who bears responsibility if an AI agent executes a payment that the user later disputes?
Traditional chargeback processes may not fit this new model, where intent and authorization blur. Experts warn that regulation, liability, and authentication models will need to evolve to protect both consumers and merchants. Future industry discussions, potentially with compliance leaders, will be vital in shaping how disputes, fraud prevention, and accountability frameworks are managed in an agentic future.
Why MENA is Poised To LEAD
The MENA region is uniquely positioned to accelerate agentic commerce thanks to rapid fintech adoption and government-backed innovation.
Across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, digital payments are growing exponentially. Open banking, wallet innovation, and national payment platforms like Mada and SADAD have already laid the foundation for programmable payments.
Add to that MENA’s young, mobile-first consumer base and strong appetite for seamless experiences, and you have the perfect environment for AI-driven, automated commerce to thrive.
Businesses that rely on payment orchestration platforms like Apaya can quickly adapt to this change, connecting multiple payment methods, currencies, and routing rules through a single API, ready for agents to act.
How Agentic Commerce Will Change Business
For merchants and platforms, Agentic Commerce introduces both opportunity and challenge:
Discoverability: If your products and pricing aren’t machine-readable or accessible through APIs, agents won’t find you.
Trust: AI agents will prioritise trusted, secure payments and network tokenization that can handle programmable transactions safely.
Efficiency: Automated payments reduce cart abandonment, streamline fulfilment, and enable new recurring-order models.
Customer experience: Businesses that integrate agent-friendly checkout flows can offer faster, frictionless, and more personalised commerce journeys.
As AI assistants become part of everyday life — from Siri and Alexa to ChatGPT-powered shopping agents — your ability to transact with them will determine your competitiveness.
“Agentic commerce isn’t an all-or-nothing future — it’s a channel that will reward interoperability, clarity and trust. At Apaya, we’re focused on making payments safely integrated and embedded so businesses can delegate everyday commerce with confidence. By helping MENA businesses connect seamlessly to local and global payment networks, we’re building the orchestration layer that makes agentic commerce safe, scalable, and seamless.” — Michael Tomlins, CEO, Apaya
Getting Agent-Ready With Apaya
As this new era unfolds, Apaya’s mission is clear: to help businesses, merchants, and payment providers simplify complex payment ecosystems and prepare for the next generation of digital transactions.
With Apaya’s payment orchestration platform, you can:
Connect to multiple payment providers and local rails in one place.
Optimise routing, tokenisation, and authorisation automatically.
Support programmable, agent-driven transactions with built-in security and compliance.
Scale easily and faster across borders.
Whether you’re a fintech innovator, e-commerce leader, or a payments specialist, becoming agent-ready starts with having the right orchestration foundation.
Agentic Commerce Orchestrated at Scale
Agentic Commerce will redefine digital payments — and the transformation has already begun. In the MENA region, where fintech adoption outpaces global averages, early movers will set the standard for AI-enabled, frictionless commerce.
Apaya is here to help you lead that change — safely, intelligently, and at scale.
→ Talk to our team to learn how Apaya’s payment orchestration platform can help you become agent-ready.