Payments firm Adyen is urging merchants to reinforce direct customer relationships as AI chatbots increasingly handle core parts of the shopping experience, potentially hollowing out retailers' direct access to repeat buyers, company co-CEO Pieter van der Does said on Thursday.
Historically, customers have themselves initiated product searches, logged into retailer websites or apps, and completed transactions through merchants' channels. Van der Does described a scenario in which AI shopping assistants could assume that sequence - recommending items, selecting merchants and even triggering payments independently - which would reduce the role of retailers in the buyer-seller link.
Van der Does recounted a conversation with a merchant this week that still receives 70% of its sales through direct channels and is intent on preserving that share as shoppers increasingly start their searches via chatbot interfaces. "Loyalty becomes way more important," he said, stressing that merchants are watching for any loss of customer connection as large language models and AI agents gain prominence.
To respond to this shift, Adyen has developed a new platform aimed at enterprise merchants and payments initiated by AI agents. The company processes payments for high-end retailers including Herm e8s and Hugo Boss, and has recently moved to bolster its retention and billing offerings through strategic acquisitions - buying loyalty software specialist Talon.One and billing provider Orb.
These moves are intended to provide merchants with stronger tools to retain customers and to adapt to commercial models being introduced by AI software providers, which may charge on a usage basis rather than via fixed subscriptions. "AI is really impacting our merchants," van der Does said. He framed Adyen's role as extending beyond payment processing to helping merchants maintain direct links to customers so they are not disintermediated or reduced to demand that originates solely through language models.
Market analysts took note of Adyen's traction with AI customers. JPMorgan said the company's signing of OpenAI as a customer, mentioned in its half-year update, was an unexpected positive that indicated Adyen is gaining ground among AI firms.
AI is also changing the infrastructure demands on payments providers. Adyen said it will bring forward planned spending on computing and storage capacity from next year due to higher prices and supply constraints. Van der Does noted that roughly two-thirds of the company's capital expenditures are allocated to private cloud systems that run its core services.
As merchants adjust to AI-driven discovery and purchasing, Adyen is positioning itself to offer an expanded set of tools centered on loyalty, billing and enterprise-grade support for AI-agent payments. The company's actions reflect an expectation that retailers will seek technology partners to preserve direct customer engagement as the commerce landscape evolves.