In agentic commerce, only the payment methods in the token layer get chosen. The rest become invisible.

When AI agents shop on your behalf, they default to the card on file. That design choice was quietly killing alternative payment methods. Klarna, Affirm, and Stripe moved on the same day to fix it.

Here is a problem nobody was talking about until this week. AI shopping agents default to card-on-file payments. When an agent initiates a purchase on your behalf, it reaches for whatever card you have saved. It does not ask whether you would prefer to pay in instalments. It does not offer buy now, pay later. It does not present the kind of payment flexibility that has become standard in human-driven checkout.

The result: as agentic commerce scales, an entire category of payment methods was being silently excluded from automated checkout flows.

On March 3, Klarna and Affirm both announced integrations with Stripe's Shared Payment Tokens, the payment primitive built specifically for agentic commerce. Same day. Different press releases. Same strategic imperative: if BNPL is not embedded in agent-driven checkout infrastructure now, it risks being permanently excluded from the next generation of commerce.

To understand why this matters, you need to understand what Stripe built.

Shared Payment Tokens (SPTs) are a payment primitive designed for a world where the buyer is software, not a person. When a customer authorises an AI agent to make purchases, Stripe provisions a token scoped to that customer's intent. The token carries the customer's payment preferences without exposing the underlying credentials. The agent uses the token to initiate the transaction. The merchant processes it through Stripe. The customer's actual card details never touch the agent.

SPTs launched in late 2025 and have already seen adoption from businesses including Etsy and URBN (Anthropologie, Free People, Urban Outfitters). But until this week, SPTs only supported card-based payment methods.

The March 3 expansion changed that in two directions simultaneously.

First, Stripe added support for agentic network tokens from Visa Intelligent Commerce and Mastercard Agent Pay. These are network-issued digital credentials that allow authorised agents to initiate card payments across any merchant where Visa or Mastercard is accepted. Stripe is now the first and only provider that supports both agentic network tokens and BNPL tokens in agentic commerce through a single primitive.

Second, SPTs now support BNPL. Klarna and Affirm can pass through the same permissioned token layer, meaning agents can present instalment options at checkout rather than defaulting to full card payment.

For merchants already offering Klarna or Affirm through Stripe, no additional integration is required. The capability activates automatically.

The urgency behind both announcements is revealing.

As PYMNTS reported, BNPL providers are not waiting to find out whether AI agents will remember to offer instalment options. They are embedding themselves into the infrastructure now, before the defaults get set. That framing is precise. In technology, defaults are destiny. Whatever payment method an agent reaches for first becomes the dominant method. Everything else becomes an afterthought.

Klarna framed it explicitly. The company said the integration addresses a growing gap in agentic commerce where AI shopping agents have been defaulting to card-on-file payments by design, effectively freezing out alternative payment methods.

"The infrastructure being built for agentic commerce will define online checkout for the next decade," said David Sykes, Chief Commercial Officer at Klarna. "As AI agents begin purchasing on consumers' behalf, it's critical that flexible payment options remain available."

Affirm arrived at the same conclusion from a different angle. "Commerce is evolving quickly in this golden age of AI, though the value and standard for paying over time remain durable and even more relevant," said Vishal Kapoor, SVP of Product at Affirm. The company emphasised that consumers still want to see total cost upfront and choose a clear repayment plan, even when an AI assistant is managing the transaction.

The commercial incentive for Stripe is equally clear. According to Digital Transactions, Stripe merchants offering BNPL see up to a 14 percent increase in revenue, along with higher conversion rates and average order values. Extending BNPL into agentic flows protects that revenue uplift as commerce shifts toward agent-mediated transactions.

This story is bigger than Klarna and Affirm. It reveals a structural dynamic that will play out across every payment category as agentic commerce scales.

When a human shops online, the checkout page presents options. Cards, wallets, BNPL, bank transfers. The merchant controls which methods appear and in what order. The consumer makes a choice. That choice may be influenced by habit, by rewards, by the size of the purchase, but it is a choice.

When an agent shops, there is no checkout page. There is no moment of consideration. The agent follows its programming, and that programming defaults to the simplest available credential: the card on file.

This means the design of the token layer, the infrastructure that sits between the agent and the payment, determines which methods survive the transition to agentic commerce and which methods disappear. If the token layer only supports cards, cards win by default. Not because consumers prefer them, but because the infrastructure excluded everything else.

Stripe's SPT expansion is the first serious attempt to solve this. By building a single primitive that supports card network tokens, BNPL tokens, and potentially other payment methods in the future, Stripe is creating a level playing field at the infrastructure layer. The agent does not need to understand the difference between a Visa token and a Klarna instalment plan. It presents the options. The customer authorises. The token handles the rest.

The timing of these BNPL announcements collides with a significant regulatory shift. The UK's Financial Conduct Authority confirmed in February that BNPL providers will come under FCA supervision from July 15, 2026. Lenders will need authorisation, affordability checks become mandatory, and consumers gain access to the Financial Ombudsman for disputes.

This regulatory clarity could accelerate BNPL's integration into agentic commerce rather than slow it down. Regulated BNPL providers with FCA authorisation become more attractive as agent-compatible payment methods precisely because they carry institutional credibility. An AI agent selecting a payment method on a consumer's behalf has a stronger case for choosing a regulated instalment provider than an unregulated one.

The 11 million UK consumers who use BNPL services represent a substantial market where agent-driven checkout and regulated BNPL could converge. The question is whether the SPT infrastructure that Stripe, Klarna, and Affirm are building in the US market extends to the UK quickly enough to meet the July deadline.

Zoom out and the pattern becomes clear. Every major payment method is racing to embed itself in the agent infrastructure layer before the defaults solidify.

Visa and Mastercard have their agentic network tokens. Klarna and Affirm now have BNPL tokens through Stripe. Google's Universal Commerce Protocol and OpenAI's Agentic Commerce Protocol are defining how agents discover and interact with merchants. FIS is building the issuer-side authorisation layer, as we explored in our analysis of its TSYS acquisition.

The companies that are not building token-level integration for agentic flows, the regional BNPL providers, the niche wallet operators, the payment methods that depend on being presented on a checkout page to get selected, face an existential problem. When the checkout page disappears, so does their visibility.

As we noted in our coverage of how agentic commerce will reprice payments, agents optimise for cost, speed, and reliability. They do not have loyalty to payment brands. But they can only select from the methods available in their token layer. Presence in the infrastructure is a prerequisite for being chosen.

Stripe, with its Agentic Commerce Protocol, its Shared Payment Tokens, and now its BNPL token support, is positioning itself as the universal payment layer for AI commerce. The company that already processes payments for millions of merchants is becoming the company that processes payments for millions of agents.

When an AI agent buys something on your behalf, should it default to whatever card you have saved, or should it offer you the same payment choices you would see on a checkout page?