AI Agents, Real Transactions - The New Travel Economy at The #Phocuswright Conference 2025
Summary
This panel from The Phocuswright Conference 2025 brings together payments leaders from Visa, Stripe, and ARC (Airlines Reporting Corporation) to examine how agentic commerce will reshape travel transactions. Moderated by Phocuswright's Mike Coletta, the session opens with survey data showing that a quarter to a third of US and European travelers expressed interest in booking travel directly within generative AI platforms — while the overwhelming majority are already using these tools to plan trips.
Clara Liang of Stripe explains the Agent Commerce Protocol (ACP), co-developed with OpenAI and announced in September 2025, which went live with Etsy for simple products. ACP defines how buyers, sellers, and AI platforms communicate programmatically at checkout. Key features include shared payment tokens that allow payment credentials to be used securely without exposing underlying card data, spend limits, time limits, and revocation capabilities. Stripe layers real-time fraud signals drawn from trillions of transactions — covering approximately 92% of all cards — on top of these tokens. Critically, ACP designates the original seller as the merchant of record, preserving pricing control, inventory management, fulfillment responsibility, and post-checkout relationships including upsell and cross-sell opportunities.
Gloria Colgan of Visa describes the Trusted Agent Protocol (TAP), announced as part of Visa Intelligent Commerce in October 2025. TAP addresses three dimensions: authentication (verifying that an agent acting in a transaction is legitimate and was authorized by a real human, not a fraud bot), tokenization (securing payment credentials end-to-end), and rich metadata capture (recording buyer intent signals so merchants can validate that what an agent is purchasing matches what the consumer actually wanted). Both ACP and TAP are designed as open standards to enable interoperability across the hundreds or thousands of agent platforms expected to emerge.
Jennifer Watkins of ARC provides a travel-industry grounding, noting that agentic commerce was absent from airline distribution conference agendas in spring 2025 but dominated every panel by late 2025. Airlines' primary concerns include disintermediation from the customer relationship, fraud exposure as payments teams navigate new flows, and readiness of third-party agency distribution channels. ARC processes about 20% of transactions via NDC — the first step toward modern airline retailing — and Watkins estimates orders (the next step) could be supported by airlines in 2026.
On stablecoins, both Clara and Gloria describe them as an enabler for real-time, cross-border settlement in agentic transactions — particularly for multi-currency payins, treasury management, and payouts to international operators — with Starlink cited as a current real-world example.
The panel identifies B2B flows as the most immediate use case for agentic commerce: high-volume, repetitive transactions such as OTA-to-hotel payouts or bulk flight bookings are natural starting points. The closing advice to travel companies: engage now, play with the technologies personally and professionally, prioritize interoperable open-standard vendors over closed ecosystems, and treat payments as a first-class consideration from the outset — not an afterthought as it was during the early e-commerce era.
Key Takeaways
- •Make your business 'agent-readable' now: ensure your product catalog, pricing, inventory, and loyalty data are structured and accessible to AI platforms before agentic booking scales.
- •ACP (Stripe/OpenAI) designates the original seller as merchant of record, meaning sellers retain pricing control, inventory management, and the post-checkout customer relationship — brand disintermediation is not inevitable.
- •Shared payment tokens let AI agents complete purchases without exposing underlying card credentials; they can include spend limits, time limits, and revocation — significantly reducing fraud exposure.
- •Buyer intent metadata is critical: airlines and suppliers need to pass rich preference data (seat class, loyalty tier, preferred routes) through agentic flows to ensure agents execute what the customer actually wants.
- •Prioritize vendors and partners who support open, interoperable standards (ACP, TAP) over closed-loop ecosystems — the pace of change makes flexibility essential.
- •B2B flows are the near-term agentic commerce opportunity: high-volume, repetitive transactions like bulk bookings and supplier payouts are where agents will deploy first.
- •Stablecoins offer a practical cross-border settlement layer for travel: instant payouts, lower fees, multi-currency repatriation, and real-time treasury management — relevant for any company operating internationally.
- •Airlines are still early in the NDC/modern retailing journey (~20% NDC penetration at ARC) — full agentic readiness requires completing this foundation, which may extend to 2026 and beyond.
- •Treat payments as a core strategic consideration in your agentic commerce roadmap from the start — the mistake of e-commerce's early days was treating payments as an afterthought.
- Participate in the standards conversations now: the protocols are not finalized, and companies engaging today are actively shaping the rules of the emerging agentic travel economy.
Transcript
We want to dig into how Agentic Commerce and payments will work behind the scenes for travel without getting too technical. Um, and just as importantly, what does the audience really need to know and what do they need to do to prepare for all of this? So, we'll do this by focusing on the recent announcement that Visa and Stripe have made about their protocols. And Jennifer, we have you here to interpret help interpret what it all means for travel sellers. Before we jump in, I want to put up a ch...
