Fintech 2040 Insights
Fintech 2040 examines how financial services may evolve over the next decade. This curated blog series brings together research, analysis, and informed perspectives on the structural shifts shaping the future of finance – exploring long-term change through technology, design, and trust.
European fintech and agentic commerce: Building the future on Europe’s terms
The dominant narrative around AI-driven commerce tends to cast Europe as a regulatory laggard, weighed down by compliance obligations while US and Chinese platforms move fast. That framing may misread the current situation. European fintech companies enter the agentic era with a set of institutional building blocks that no other market has assembled in quite the same way – and with a regulatory approach that, if coherently implemented, could define a genuinely competitive model of delegated commerce.
AI ecommerce search: How AI agents choose what gets bought
The next visibility crisis in ecommerce may not be about losing traffic. It may be about never being considered in the first place. When AI agents begin to choose products on behalf of consumers, merchants will no longer compete only for attention on a results page. They will compete for inclusion in an agent’s decision set - and that changes what it means to be found. As AI ecommerce search evolves, visibility increasingly depends on whether autonomous systems can understand, evaluate, and trust a merchant’s data.
Ecommerce infrastructure: The protocol layer is the new battleground
Ecommerce infrastructure is becoming a critical competitive advantage as AI agents begin to search, compare, and purchase products on behalf of consumers. The next battle in ecommerce will not start on a product page – it will start before a customer ever sees one.
The future of checkout: Why trust replaces the click
For decades, the checkout page was the most critical moment in ecommerce. Merchants measured every abandoned cart, every hesitation, and every unnecessary step. One extra page could cost millions in lost conversions. The future of checkout, however, looks very different. In an agentic world – where AI agents can select products, trigger payments, and manage fulfilment on behalf of consumers – checkout as a defined moment may slowly disappear.
