Checkout.com is back in profitable growth mode, surpassing $300 billion in processed volume in 2025, up 64% year on year. At Money 20/20, Bassel Sabri spoke with Chief Marketing Officer Rory O'Neill about the company's resurgence and its push into the era of agentic commerce.
Rory, if we talk about AI in payments, what is expected of AI when it is integrated into payments?
There are really three parts to the answer. The first is that AI, data science, and machine learning have arguably always been in payments. Companies like Checkout have used AI at scale to increase acceptance rates. Then there is wide experimentation of how we deploy AI across every function that supports our merchants — finance teams looking at idle treasury, customer service teams giving merchants answers at the right time. And then of course there is agentic commerce, which we are still waiting to see exactly how that will transpire. But the thought of agents buying on our behalf will transform commerce.
How much of that is actually part of AI implementation into payments today?
Very little. The agentic infrastructure has the same trust challenges that digital payments had many years ago. It was January 2025 when Sam Altman declared that agents would transform the world. Visa and Mastercard in May 2025 announced new protocols to support agentic commerce. We now have more protocols than we have transactions. The industry has to collaborate to put trust in the system first. What we are seeing from consumers worldwide and here in Saudi is that they are using AI and agents to discover products — but they are not quite yet willing to let AI pay.
How can organisations move beyond AI hype for real results?
Experimentation. At Checkout, writing software has fundamentally changed. Pull requests are now 70% generated with AI, and our Model Context Protocol now allows developers to build to the Checkout network 81% faster than before. Right across every organisation you have got to experiment with these tools and then rapidly deploy what works.
What payment trends are you seeing in Saudi and MENA?
Globally, nobody really likes to pay for anything. The payment experience has to be completely invisible — adding no friction to commerce at all. Here in Saudi, 98% of consumers say they want completely invisible payments. So for the brands we work with, what they want from Checkout is to be completely invisible and make sure the consumer has a great experience with just them and their brand.
Rory, it has been great having you with us.
Great pleasure. Thank you very much.
Rory O'Neill: Thank you, great.
