ING and Worldline complete Europe's first live agentic payment with AI assistant

ING completes live end-to-end European agentic payment transaction

This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community. The transaction saw an ING customer use an AI assistant to buy tickets on the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra website. The customer told the assistant what they were looking for: experience, dates, budget. The assistant suggested options, and the customer picked one and approved the purchase. From choosing the tickets to completing the payment, every step was carried out by the AI, running on infrastructure based entirely in Europe. "We're excited about this move towards a future where seamless, intelligent interactions redefine the way people engage with banking and online shopping," says Hans Overeem, head of Payments at ING in the Netherlands. Madalena Cascais Tomé, member of executive committee, Worldline, adds: "Agentic commerce is no longer theoretical, it is production-ready today. Powered by Worldline's platform, this transaction proves that we are fully enabled across acceptance, acquiring, authentication and issuer processing at a pan-European level."

Worldline paves the way for agentic commerce in Europe

The transaction was carried out between an ING cardholder and a Dutch merchant. It relies on a shared infrastructure deployed across the Netherlands and Belgium, utilizing the Mastercard network alongside the secure authentication and authorization mechanisms of the three partners. This demonstration validates the ability of an artificial intelligence agent acting on behalf of a merchant to securely initiate and authenticate a payment across multiple European markets. 'Agentic commerce is no longer theoretical: it is production-ready today', stated Madalena Cascais Tomé, member of Worldline's Executive Committee. According to her, this transaction demonstrates that the group already possesses an operational infrastructure on a European scale covering acceptance, acquiring, authentication, and card issuance.