Podcast: The future of agentic commerce and global payments

Boku CEO Stuart Neal recently joined Neil Hughes on the Tech Talks Daily podcast to unpack a major shift in global commerce.

Payments are no longer converging around cards. They are fragmenting, localising, and becoming more complex. And that changes everything for merchants.

In a wide ranging conversation, Stuart explored what is driving this shift and what it means for businesses scaling globally.

In this episode, Stuart shares:

• Why governments and central banks are prioritising control over payment ecosystems

• The continued rise of local payment methods and what it means for merchants

• The challenge of scaling globally in a fragmented payments landscape

• The role of aggregators in simplifying complexity

• The reality of agentic commerce and where friction will remain

• How subscription businesses are evolving and driving growth

Key insights

Payments are becoming local by default

While cards continue to grow, local payment methods are growing faster. Across many markets, consumers are choosing wallets, account to account payments, and carrier billing over traditional cards.

For merchants, this creates a clear challenge. Card networks solved global interoperability over decades. Local payment methods have not. Accessing them requires new infrastructure, new partners, and a different approach to payments strategy.

Infrastructure is the real barrier to global growth

Expanding into new markets is not just a technical challenge. It requires licenses, local banking infrastructure, currency handling, and regulatory approval.

This is where complexity increases quickly. Building this in house is only realistic for a small number of the largest platforms. For most merchants, working with a partner that can abstract this complexity is the more scalable path.

Agentic commerce will reshape the front end, not the fundamentals

As AI driven commerce evolves, discovery and checkout experiences will change rapidly. But payments infrastructure will not disappear.

Authentication, authorisation, and identity checks still sit behind every transaction. That friction exists by design and will remain, even as the buying experience becomes more seamless.

Subscriptions remain resilient and competitive

Despite increasing competition and signs of subscription fatigue, the model continues to grow globally.

Merchants are focused on expanding reach and reducing churn. This is being driven by broader payment choice, geographic expansion, and new distribution models such as bundling through telcos, wallets, and pay TV providers.

Watch the full podcast

Watch the full podcast below to hear more on how payments are evolving and what merchants need to do to stay ahead.