Item-Level Data Gives AI Agents Smarter Buying Power

The agentic enterprise will be built through deliberate decisions about where to trust agents, FIS Head of Product Management, Payment Networks Mladen Vladic writes in a new PYMNTS eBook, “Building the Agent-Ready Payments Enterprise.”

As artificial intelligence evolves from copilots to agents that execute work across enterprise systems, what does it actually take to make autonomy real? In payments and commerce, we’re already seeing the answer take shape at the point where value is created: the purchase.

Where Agents Are Reshaping Workflows and Decision Rights

Agentic commerce has arrived — it’s here already. A new generation of AI agents are emerging that now search, source, negotiate and complete purchases on our behalf (consumers), transacting at superhuman speed within rules their owners define. McKinsey projects these agents could help generate up to $1 trillion in orchestrated retail revenue in the U.S. alone by 2030, with global projections reaching as high as $5 trillion.

This shift redistributes decision rights. When an agent chooses where to shop and how to pay, loyalty, offers and benefits become part of its decision logic, not a post-purchase afterthought. The rise of item-level insights has been a game changer. This shift from transactional to relational payments was a trend we saw coming at FIS, and it has been great to see our early investments in advanced tech pay off.

That distinction between transaction-level and item-level intelligence matters. Transaction signals tell you where someone shopped and how much they spent. Item-level intelligence gives you a digital-receipt view, line by line, so value can be applied with item-level precision.

Transforming the Customer Experience

The real transformation is timing. When value shows up at the moment of purchase, it feels less like points accounting and more like recognition. FIS Smart Basket, a modular, funder-agnostic network, brings offers, payments and loyalty into a single infrastructure for banks, credit unions, issuers, merchants and consumer brands. With an advanced scoring engine and real-time item-level intelligence, customers earn and enjoy rewards instantly, eliminating the traditional lag between the two.

Risk Controls and Governance Guardrails

Autonomy without guardrails is a liability. The winners will be the ecosystems that securely embed intelligence into payments so agents can act with guardrails, relevance and trust. Three principles guide our approach:

Agents use only approved payment methods, so humans stay in control.

Transactions execute within existing authorization, authentication and dispute networks, keeping financial institutions integral to security and oversight.

Spending limits, permissions and rules of engagement stay with the account holder and the institution, who can adjust or revoke an agent’s authority at any time.

Where Autonomy Is Harder to Scale Than Expected

Here’s the honest part. Scaling agentic systems is tougher than the headlines suggest. The most scalable ecosystems start with what’s universally available, transaction-level signals across the merchant landscape, then deepen into item-level precision where item visibility exists.

Two barriers slow adoption. First, fragmented infrastructure. Card issuers, sellers and brands must collaborate within a unified, single infrastructure, something most enterprises haven’t built. Second, first impressions: if a customer’s first interaction with this experience isn’t ideal, they won’t come back to it quickly.

The agentic enterprise won’t be built through futuristic autonomy. It will be built through deliberate decisions about where to trust agents, where humans stay in control and which workflows to redesign first. The enterprises that win won’t be the ones running the most agents — they’ll be the ones that own the connective layer agents act through, with the institution still setting the rules. In payments, that work is already underway.