Agentic Commerce with Colin Luce, CEO Basis Theory

Agentic commerce was one of the loudest e-commerce trends of 2025 — but is it real demand or mostly hype + incentives?In this episode of Payments FM, Nikita sits down with Colin Luce, Founder & CEO of Basis Theory, to unpack what’s actually happening in agentic commerce and agentic payments right now, what merchants should do today, and why trust + tokenization might decide how this all plays out.We cover:The real blocker: messy merchant data and product availabilityEmbedded checkout vs “true agents transacting on your behalf”Why virtual cards would be a bad end-state for the ecosystemACP (Agentic Commerce Protocol), platform incentives, and “who owns the customer?”Where agentic payments may show real near-term value (hint: not the sexy B2C stuff)Subscribe on YouTube / Spotify / Apple Podcasts, and for future episodes go to payments.fm.Join the community Slack:https://payments.fm/p/slackChapters01:36 Welcome Colin Luce (Basis Theory)02:23 FOMO, hype, and incentives driving adoption06:04 What merchants should do first (traffic, data, readiness)12:36 Payments realities: embedded checkout vs true agent payments19:37 Are today’s demos “magic”? (disappointing discovery, data quality)23:50 Best use cases + where agentic commerce really helps34:26 Protocols, ACP momentum, and merchant voice41:31 Who should store the payment credential? (trust + tokenization)44:59 Chargebacks & liability in an agent-driven world46:23 Cybersecurity risks in the rush to ship49:49 Biggest blocker in payments: behavior change54:01 One elevator tip to improve payment performance#payments #ecommerce #fintech #tokenization #agenticcommerce #ai This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit payments.fm