This article first appeared in Digital Edge, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on June 8, 2026 - June 14, 2026

The payments industry is already looking beyond QR codes to agentic commerce, which stakeholders say could be the next major breakthrough in the sector.

Agentic commerce involves artificial intelligence (AI) agents acting on behalf of consumers and businesses to initiate, execute and reconcile payments through open application programming interfaces (APIs), with little human intervention.

This inflection point is fast approaching as Southeast Asia’s digital payments ecosystem reaches a new level of maturity. The region’s “cash is king” era is giving way to a highly integrated digital economy, with payment penetration on track to reach 73% of total gross transaction value (GTV) among the 10 Asean member states by 2030, according to the e-Conomy SEA 2025 report by Google, Temasek and Bain & Co.

The QR code has been the most visible catalyst of this development. QR codes began as a peer-to-peer transfer tool and have now matured into a unified national system across all 10 Southeast Asian nations, including Myanmar’s MMQR and Brunei’s taurusQR. Cash as a percentage of total GTV is expected to plummet from 39% in 2025 to 27% by 2030.

“I think at some point, cash will be eliminated, but there’s still a long journey before we get there. But with everyone having an e-wallet and [knowing how to use] QR payment, it is possible to see a world where cash [is no longer used],” says Eng Sheng Guan, CEO and co-founder of payment gateway provider Fiuu.

QR adoption has also widened access for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs).

“More people see the benefits of transacting digitally as well because there is no need to keep cash. It’s also better security because we are seeing fewer thefts on the streets,” says Eng.

The real disruption lies ahead as the industry moves towards removing the human element from the payment journey altogether. 

As agentic protocols and regulatory frameworks continue to mature, agentic commerce is expected to become a regional reality within the next three years, says Nakul Kothari, head of APAC and Middle East at JusPay, a Bangalore-headquartered cross-border payment platform.

“Imagine an AI agent searching for a travel itinerary, optimising the cost, booking the entire trip and handling the payment end to end,” he says.

Consumer appetite is building, albeit cautiously. Research by Worldpay across multiple countries found that only about one in four shoppers say they would “never” use an AI agent, while 75% are either ready to try it immediately or are persuadable, provided the right safeguards are in place. Most consumers expect agentic AI to handle up to 20% of their transactions, which shows that it is viewed as a helper channel rather than a wholesale replacement for existing shopping behaviour.

The primary concerns revolve around accountability: who handles fraud, chargebacks and post-transaction disputes when the human is removed from the chain.

JusPay’s Nakul points to historical precedent in India, where Visa and Mastercard introduced biometric authentication with strict limits — such as transaction caps or frequency limits — to build consumer confidence.

“It’s about setting up more guard rails,” he says.

Andrew Chim, head of Southeast Asia expansion at Airwallex, says the company uses AI to monitor multi-currency transactions and flag potential fraud in real time. The technology is also used for tasks such as matching receipts through optical character recognition (OCR) and identifying spending that falls outside company policies.

Despite the growing role of AI, Airwallex’s Chim says human oversight remains necessary.

“We are very deliberate about where we let AI act autonomously. Judgement on risk is hard to define, and we are not at a point where an agent can unilaterally move large FX (foreign exchange) positions without human checks and balances.”

Fiuu’s Eng says acquirers will remain a critical part of the payments ecosystem, regardless of how much AI reshapes the transaction experience. “AI changes the process, making payment more seamless or even automated. Agentic AI will play a big role in helping a customer carry out a transaction, but ultimately, there is a reliance on payment networks like ours to do that.”

The infrastructure supporting these ambitions is also being restructured. The Regional Payment Connectivity (RPC) initiative — originally established by five central banks and now expanded to nine signatories — allows, for instance, a Malaysian traveller to pay a street vendor in Bangkok or Jakarta as easily as he would in Kuala Lumpur.

Visa Malaysia says card acceptance remains complementary to QR in this multi-rail world,  noting that 82% of businesses report a positive impact on sales and customer behaviour from card payments, including increased sales and larger ticket purchases.

“Visa views QR as part of a broader multi-rail ecosystem, rather than a competition between payment methods. Visa’s strategy is centred on interoperability and partnerships, ensuring different systems can work together as cross-border commerce scales,” says Visa.

Airwallex’s Chim reiterates this, adding that businesses are moving from selective product access to full commercial digital solutions. Rather than managing separate remittance and payment gateway providers, companies now seek to collect, hold, convert and move funds within a single dashboard.

“In the past, businesses would have to use other financial services providers and us to do the combination of these things, but now with all the licences we have acquired, they can do it from a single dashboard.

“This is impactful because businesses face a lot of friction in terms of having to open multiple bank accounts, having to use a remittance provider or using a payment gateway provider. These providers are different, it’s hard to reconcile and manage the data across different platforms,” he says.

However, Chim highlights that instant payment rails still face limitations for large-scale business-to-business (B2B) transactions, such as low transaction caps and the absence of “maker-checker” approval workflows. 

“For businesses, the permanent nature of instant transfers means there is no ‘undo’ button if a digit is entered incorrectly on a massive payment.”

Despite the push for regional consolidation, the reality on the ground is more complex. JusPay’s Nakul says that every country maintains its own unique “nuances” when it comes to regulation and local payment preferences.

“If you are in Singapore, it is a card-heavy market. But if you want to expand to Indonesia, it is virtual account-heavy. Malaysia is wallet-heavy, and Thailand is seeing the rise of PromptPay, a real-time payment method,” he explains.

Licensing is another area fraught with regulatory bottlenecks. Eng says Fiuu’s application for a payment licence in Thailand has taken over 2½ years, reflecting the complexity of local processes and language considerations.

The rise of data sovereignty laws adds further burden, forcing companies to open dedicated cloud nodes in markets like Indonesia and Thailand where certain data must be hosted locally.

Looking ahead, empowering micro-merchants and MSMEs, which are the backbone of the Asean economy, is a shared priority across the industry.

Airwallex’s Chim shares that while MSMEs are often grouped together, their needs vary drastically. A roadside vendor may only require simple QR acceptance, while online brands scaling across 10 markets need sophisticated infrastructure to handle multi-currency flows, fraud prevention and regulatory compliance, he points out.

Visa’s “Visa Accept” solution allows merchants to accept card payments using their own mobile devices, bypassing expensive traditional point-of-sale (POS) hardware.

“Software-based solutions such as Visa Accept enable card acceptance in settings like night markets and rural attractions without expensive hardware, complementing QR and cash for domestic customers,” says Visa.

As competition intensifies between traditional banks and e-wallet providers, merchant discount rates (MDR) — the percentage fee a business pays to process each transaction — are trending downwards. The e-Conomy SEA 2025 report states that weighted average MDR are declining by 0.05 percentage points annually as consumers shift towards cheaper methods like QR codes.

In this environment, a non-zero MDR — typically ranging from 1% to 3% — is no longer justifiable by simple transaction processing alone. Success now depends on justifying these costs through value-added services.

“Looking ahead, merchants will prioritise outcomes over payment rails. Businesses will care less about whether a payment is via card or QR and more about reliability, security and customer preference,” says Visa.

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