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The Agentic Payments Era — 1,000 Financial and Retail Firms on the Gaps and Opportunities in Payment Modernization
The agentic-payments era — in which AI agents discover and compare products and complete payments — is becoming reality. According to Samjong INSIGHT by Samjong KPMG Economic Research Institute, in a KPMG International survey of 500 financial firms and 500 retail/consumer-goods companies worldwide, 51% of financial firms said the future winners of the payments industry will be those that build the payment ecosystem. Financial firms spend an average of USD 96.9 million on payment modernization, with 18% investing over USD 100 million.
Demand-supply mismatch. The report's key finding is the expectation gap between the two industries. 84% of retail and consumer-goods firms plan to adopt or expand tokenized payments, while only 46% of financial firms are prepared. BNPL also shows a 25-percentage-point gap (retail demand 67% vs. financial support 42%). Conversely, financial firms emphasize biometric payments (97%) and in-app payments (80%), but retail demand sits at just 33% and 32%. This mismatch is the largest bottleneck in payment modernization.
The gap between leaders and laggards is widening. Among leaders (top 20% in payment modernization, mostly large firms with annual revenue above USD 10 billion), 53% have already built digital-asset infrastructure, while only 6% of laggards (bottom 20%) have. The share holding plans to monetize payment data is 98% for leaders vs. 25% for laggards — nearly a 4x gap. The fastest-growing AI use cases over the next three years were cited as personalization based on behavioral and contextual data, data-driven pricing insights, and regulatory-compliance automation.
What this means for M&A. The rapid reshaping of the payment-modernization ecosystem creates M&A opportunities at the intersection of three industries — finance, retail, and fintech. First, traditional financial institutions are likely to expand bolt-on acquisitions of fintechs to internalize programmable-payment capabilities (tokenization, stablecoins, CBDC). Second, smaller financial firms unable to bear legacy-system replacement costs (66% of laggards cite this as the biggest barrier) may be consolidated into large neobanks or payment platforms. Third, as data-sharing structures between retail/consumer-goods firms and financial institutions evolve, the strategic value of tech firms with embedded-finance capabilities will rise, making them a core axis of cross-sector deal sourcing.
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Full report: Samjong KPMG Economic Research Institute (April 2026)
Contact: Samjong KPMG M&A Center