What retail and travel leaders must build now
Commerce is shifting from human browsing to delegated, autonomous buying. By 2030, up to 25% of e-commerce will flow through AI agents, yet today’s checkout flows remain built strictly for human clicks. When a machine tries to transact, the journey breaks, trapping retailers in endless AI pilots.
Join Thoughtworks for an exclusive, private roundtable dinner bringing together an intimate group of senior digital, tech and payment leaders from Europe’s premier retail, travel and marketplace ecosystems.
We will explore:
The customer shift: How agentic buying reshapes discovery, brand channels, and customer loyalty.
Agentic payments: How AI agents will initiate, authorize, and complete transactions autonomously.
Core infrastructure: Solving for identity, authentication, fraud prevention, and orchestration.
Production reality: Scaling from isolated AI pilots to secure, revenue-generating core systems.
Key highlights:
Autonomous shopper experience: A practical look at rebuilding core systems for agentic commerce.
Peer-led discussion: Chatham House rule. No slides, no pitches, no broadcast.
The discussion
Our discussion will explore how retail, travel and marketplace leaders must adapt as commerce shifts from human browsing to delegated, autonomous buying.
When an AI agent sits directly between you and your customer, how do customer relationships change?
We explore how delegating discovery and purchase decisions reshapes channel strategy, brand loyalty, and customer insight. We examine what merchants must build to stay visible and trusted when algorithms prioritize price and convenience over traditional brand equity.
AI buying journeys frequently break at checkout because existing stacks are built strictly for human clicks.
We examine how AI agents will initiate, authorize and complete transactions. We look at the mechanics of delegated payment authority, emerging standards like the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) and how to prevent ecosystem fragmentation.
Who takes responsibility when an autonomous buying decision goes wrong?
We address the core capabilities needed for agent identity, authentication, policy controls, and fraud prevention. We dive into the liability models required to resolve disputes when agents make mistakes or act outside customer mandates.
How do organizations move from isolated AI experiments to secure, revenue-generating core systems?
We will reference an autonomous shopper experience, discuss the foundational capabilities, machine-readable architectures and immediate use cases needed to prepare your checkout and payment stacks for machine-driven commerce.
This raises new questions around payment authorisation, identity, risk controls and how organisations maintain trust and control in agent-mediated transactions.
Timings
5:30 PM - 6:00 PM
6:00 - 6:15
Alla Gancz
6:15 - 9:00
Julian Wraith, Mattia Zanella, Paul Asiimwe, Vikas Pandey and guests
Speakers
Alla Gancz
Global Head of Payments, Thoughtworks
Julian Wraith
Solutions Architecture Leader - Benelux, AWS
Mattia Zanella
Head of ISV Partnerships EMEA, Adyen
Paul Asiimwe
Payments Lead, Uber
Vikas Pandey
Head of Technology and Data, OTTO Payments
Request an invitation
These sessions are subject to acceptance and capped to ensure high-quality peer interaction.