Canada’s payments landscape is changing quickly, but not always in the ways merchants might expect.
Credit cards remain the dominant payment method, even as digital wallet adoption accelerates. Buy now, pay later is becoming part of the expected checkout experience. Cross-border commerce is opening new revenue opportunities, but also adding complexity around currencies, regulations, fraud, and local payment preferences.
At the same time, a new wave of payments innovation is approaching. Canada’s Real-Time Rail promises to modernize how money moves, while agentic commerce—where AI agents can search, compare, and eventually complete purchases on behalf of consumers—could reshape the relationship between merchants, customers, and payment providers.
To better understand where the market is headed, Fintech.ca spoke with Phil Hogg, President of Worldpay Canada Corporation, now Global Payments.
In the following Q&A, Hogg discusses what Canadian consumers expect at checkout, why omnichannel payments matter, how merchants can prepare for real-time payments and cross-border growth, and why trust will be critical as AI begins to play a larger role in commerce.
How would you describe the current Canadian payments landscape and what consumers are expecting at checkout?
PH: At Worldpay, now Global Payments, we process over 110 million transactions a day globally, and what we are seeing in Canada mirrors a broader global trend – consumers want speed, simplicity, and choice.
At checkout, Canadians expect: a frictionless experience (fast with minimal steps); the ability to pay their preferred way—credit, debit, digital wallet, or alternative methods; and, security and trust, especially as fraud awareness increases.
What’s unique in Canada is that while we’re seeing innovation, credit cards still dominate, and consumers are selective about adopting new methods unless they clearly improve the experience. For merchants, this means the bar is higher than ever: checkout is no longer just a transaction point—it’s a critical moment that defines the customer experience and influences conversion and loyalty.
Credit cards are still king, but digital wallet adoption is surging. What does this shift mean for merchants, and how does it impact a successful omnichannel strategy?
PH: Globally, we’re seeing digital and mobile payments move toward majority preference, expected to exceed 50% of the consumer usage in the near term. What’s important to understand is that digital wallets are not replacing cards – they’re digitizing them. In fact, our data shows that over half of digital wallets in Canada are funded by credit cards. Digital wallets are essentially wrapping existing payment methods in a more convenient and secure interface.
For merchants, this means two things: first, enablement is critical. If you’re not offering Apple Pay, Google Pay, and other wallet options, you’re introducing unnecessary friction—especially for mobile-first consumers. Second, it reinforces the need for a true omnichannel strategy, where: the same payment experience follows the customer across online, mobile, and in-store; payment credentials can be securely stored and reused across channels; and, merchants have a unified view of the customer journey.
A successful omnichannel strategy today isn’t about being everywhere—it’s about being consistent and seamless everywhere the customer chooses to engage.
Why is BNPL becoming a strategic necessity for merchants?
PH: BNPL is gaining traction because it directly addresses two key consumer needs: affordability and flexibility. In Canada, approximately 5% of retail sales make use of BNPL.
For merchants, the benefits are tangible: higher conversion rates, particularly on larger purchases; increased average order value; and, access to younger demographics who prefer alternative credit options
In today’s environment—where consumers are more budget-conscious—offering flexible payment options is no longer a “nice to have.” It’s becoming part of the expected checkout experience.
The key is to implement BNPL thoughtfully, ensuring it integrates seamlessly into the checkout flow and aligns with the merchant’s broader customer strategy.
What are the biggest cross-border payment hurdles, and how can merchants capture international revenue without unnecessary FX risk?
PH: One of the advantages we bring at Worldpay is the ability to help merchants scale internationally – accepting payments on over 135 currencies across more than 175 countries – while managing FX exposure and optimizing authorization rates. We believe that cross-border expansion presents significant opportunity, but also complexity (that we can manage for the merchant).
The biggest challenges we see are:
- Payment method fragmentation across markets
- Currency conversion and FX exposure
- Regulatory and compliance requirements
- Managing authorization rates and fraud across regions
To succeed, merchants need to localize the experience:
- Offer locally preferred payment methods
- Price in local currency
- Optimize routing to improve authorization rates
From an FX perspective, working with the right partner is critical. Merchants can mitigate risk through:
- Transparent FX pricing
- The ability to settle in multiple currencies
- Leveraging providers who can optimize conversion and reduce volatility exposure
Done well, cross-border payments shift from being a challenge to a meaningful growth driver.
How will Canada’s Real-Time Rail (RTR) transform merchant operations?
PH: As a member of Payments Canada’s Stakeholder Advisory Council, I see the introduction of Real-Time Rail as a significant step forward for Canada. Given our global scale – processing billions of transactions annually – we’ve seen how real-time payment systems in over 70 countries can fundamentally reshape liquidity and customer expectations.
Immediate, account-to-account settlement will:
- Improve cash flow and liquidity management
- Enable faster refunds and payouts
- Reduce reliance on traditional batch processing systems
Over time, it will also open the door to new use cases, including:
- Instant disbursement
- Real-time bill payments
- New forms of account-to-account commerce
That said, adoption will take time. Cards will remain dominant in the near term, but RTR will complement existing methods and create new opportunities for innovation in how money moves.
We’ve heard a lot about AI helping shoppers find products, but agentic commerce takes it a massive step further by letting an agent actually make the purchase. How is this shift changing the relationship between merchants and consumers?
PH: Agentic commerce transforms the consumer-merchant relationship from direct interaction to a more automated, trust-based partnership. Instead of shoppers browsing and selecting items, AI agents act on their behalf, making decisions and completing purchases. According to our recent Agentic Commerce Report, 82% of merchants surveyed believe agentic commerce will be a significant factor in online shopping by 2029. Meanwhile, the underlying technology and industry standards about agent-led transactions is still being established today.
However, this shift creates a genuine concern for merchants – the threat of disintermediation. Retailers have spent years attracting users directly to their websites, but if large language models (LLMs) start gaining a meaningful consumer footprint, merchants are rightly asking what that means for brand loyalty and trust. Unlike human consumers, AI agents aren’t swayed by product descriptions or attractive webpages; they look strictly at features and price to determine the best purchase for their users. More than ever, merchants must deeply understand how they are being represented on LLMs.
Getting ahead of the curve requires thoughtful considerations around catering to both the preferences of end consumers and the logic of autonomous agents, prioritizing transparency, personalization, and seamless integration to ensure their offerings are discoverable, trusted, and compatible with agent-driven transactions.
Handing over your digital wallet to an AI agent requires a major leap of faith. What are the biggest trust barriers consumers are facing right now, and how can merchants proactively build that trust into their checkout experiences?
PH: Most experiences still contain a human-in-the-loop element, meaning users rely on AI to build a cart but still need to hit the checkout button themselves. We are still some time away from fully autonomous flows where agents act under delegated authority – but as they improve, consumers naturally worry about security, privacy, and loss of control when authorizing AI agents to transact. Key trust barriers include fears of unauthorized purchases, data misuse, and lack of transparency.
Trust will be the most decisive factor to unlock mainstream adoption of fully autonomous agentic commerce. Major industry players, like Worldpay, now Global Payments, Visa, and Mastercard are building the required “digital handshake” . Merchants will need to lean into their payments service providers to address these concerns by deploying better fraud tools, tracking agentic transactions, and establishing robust dispute and refund mechanisms that specifically account for an agent making a transaction on behalf of a user.
From weekly groceries to booking a luxury vacation, where do you see agentic commerce taking root first, and how should those specific retailers prepare?
PH: Agentic commerce won’t affect every business the same way. The pace of change depends heavily on what merchants sell and who their customers are. AI is already emerging as a superior comparison interface than traditional search for electronics, fashion, skincare, and travel – meaning its impact is now being made on booking luxury vacations. It’s also proving its worth within financial & insurance products, where agents can evaluate complex policies faster than any human can browse.
Over the next one to two years, this will expand into health, wellness and everyday groceries. For highly researched wellness purchases, agents will be able to shortlist items based on ingredients and reviews, capturing some retailers off guard by eroding traditional brand loyalty. AI will automate grocery restocking and seamlessly switch suppliers based on price or availability.
Looking further ahead, autonomous agents will likely begin evaluating and procuring software, APIs and digital services within the next two to three years – turning pricing pages and free tiers into the primary negotiation surface. Across the board, preparation requires merchants to focus on API readiness, agent-friendly product catalogs, and enabling detailed personalization and dynamic offers that agents can easily interpret and act upon securely.
Behind the scenes, an AI agent making a purchase changes the entire process of identifying fraud. What foundational steps must merchants take with their payment infrastructure today to be ready?
PH: Merchants need to adapt fraud detection systems to recognize new agent-driven patterns, such as machine-to-machine authorization and atypical purchase flows. If merchants rely on legacy anti-fraud solutions, they will likely see a substantial rise in blocked false positives, as old systems will simply flag AI e-commerce agents as malicious bots. This ultimately means fewer sales, as consumers will increasingly rely on a shopping method the merchant is blocking.
The good news is that an estimated 80% of fraud signals will remain the same. The foundational step to processing the remaining variables is establishing a Know Your Agent (KYA) framework, which enables merchants to assess whether an AI agent is legitimate, authorized and acting with proper consent.
Beyond KYA, merchants must implement robust authentication protocols to ensure agents are being given to the right users. It’s also important for merchants to adopt a dynamic rule engine capable of allowing, blocking, or stepping up authentication based on the specific agent type of trust level. Full reporting on disputes and refunds categorized by agents is also essential.
Preparing now means investing in ML-driven fraud tools that accurately discern between trusted and non-trusted agents – ensuring payment systems can handle faster transactions, new risk signals, and evolving standards for agentic commerce, all while maintaining robust security and trust.
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