Year-Ender 2025: Leadership Insights on Digital Payments, AI & Loyalty
As 2025 comes to a close, the digital ecosystem has entered a phase of greater maturity, driven by scale, intelligence, and trust. Rising transaction volumes, rapid AI adoption, and expanding omnichannel engagement have reshaped how consumers and enterprises interact across payments, retail, and loyalty. The focus has shifted from speed and efficiency alone to secure, context-aware authentication, privacy-first infrastructure, and real-time personalisation embedded seamlessly into digital experiences. AI has emerged as the core engine of engagement, enabling hyper-personalised interactions at scale, while retail and loyalty ecosystems have evolved from cost-led optimisation to intelligent, revenue-driving and emotionally resonant models. Looking ahead to 2026, success will be defined by how effortlessly technology enables secure, trusted, and inclusive digital commerce, with AI-powered agents, data-led personalisation, and adaptive loyalty frameworks driving continuous engagement, sustained growth, and deeper brand affinity in a digital-first economy.
Shailesh Paul is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Wibmo
As we enter 2026, the evolution of technology in digital payments will be defined by trust. With transaction volumes rising exponentially and payment ecosystems becoming more complex, security must be part of the payment experience. The future will see authentication evolve from static, rule-based checks to intelligent, context-aware systems that balance strong security with minimal friction. Multi-factor authentication will continue to be foundational, but its real impact will come from how seamlessly it is embedded into resilient, interoperable payment infrastructure. We will see greater convergence of AI-driven decision making, cloud-native architectures, and privacy-by-design principles, enabling payment systems that are resilient and responsive. In 2026, success in digital payments will be defined not by how advanced the technology is, but by how effortlessly it enables secure, trusted, and inclusive digital commerce. This shift will be critical in empowering consumers and enterprises to transact with confidence in a digital-first economy.
Harsha Solanki, VP GM Asia, Infobip said, “This year has shown that AI is the core engine driving customer engagement. During peak events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, our platform recorded a staggering 12.2 billion interactions globally, with RCS experiencing a 277% surge in messaging traffic on Black Friday alone. And as the volume hits a record, AI enabled brands to deliver hyper-personalized omnichannel experiences without sacrificing speed or security. Customers demand faster and smarter interactions than ever before. By 2026, AI-powered agents are expected to manage up to 95% of routine interactions, providing instant and personalized support around the clock. They are evolving beyond basic FAQ bots into human-like, agentic models capable of complex, autonomous conversations, allowing human teams to focus on cases that require empathy and judgment.
Prem Bhatia, Co-Founder and CEO, Graas.ai
In 2025, we saw retail organisations deploy defensive agents focused primarily on cost reduction, productivity gains, and headcount optimisation. While this will continue into 2026, we will also see a clear expansion toward offensive agents. These are agents designed to drive revenue by improving demand capture, pricing decisions, and execution across channels.
Dhruv Verma, Founder & CEO – Thriwe
As we move closer to 2026, loyalty will be defined by intelligent, continuous engagement rather than point accumulation. Brands will increasingly rely on AI-powered personalised engines, including agentic recommendation capabilities, to deliver rewards, nudges and communication tailored to individual behaviour in real-time and across touchpoints. This evolution is driven by a more unified, data-led understanding of customer signals, allowing programs to move beyond rigid, rule-based models. Instead, this technology-led approach enables loyalty ecosystems to adapt dynamically to changing contexts and preferences. As a result, loyalty is emerging as a scalable, long-term driver of brand affinity, strengthening emotional connections by being meaningful, adaptive and aligned with end-to-end customer journeys. At the core of this shift are AI-powered, agentic recommendation engines that intelligently tailor rewards, nudges and communication based on individual behaviour
