BNPL for Agentic Commerce: Stripe, Affirm, Klarna

Two consequential trends in payments are converging as Affirm and Klarna begin working with Stripe to enable AI agents to initiate buy now, pay later (BNPL) purchases. The integration uses Stripe’s Shared Payment Tokens, allowing agent-assisted shopping without exposing sensitive payment credentials. According to Viraj Gupta, Product Manager for Cards Vault at Stripe, the system supports both agentic network tokens and BNPL tokens within a single integration.

Merchants offering BNPL through Stripe may see revenue increases up to 14%, along with higher conversion rates and average order values. Affirm and Klarna together serve nearly 150 million users worldwide, giving the move broad user reach.

Defensive Motivation for BNPL Providers

A primary motivation for BNPL providers is defensive: ensuring installment options remain available when purchases are made by bots rather than humans. “You could assume that the same percentage of buyers who use BNPL today will want to use it with agentic commerce,” said Don Apgar, Director of Merchant Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research. “Secondarily, nobody can use BNPL if those payments options aren’t available in agentic commerce.”

Agentic Commerce Use Cases

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