Synchrony Executive Talks Banking and Payments

Synchrony, a leading Fortune 200 consumer financing company at the heart of American commerce, is helping pave the way in banking and payments innovation. Synchrony powers everyday purchases for the 1 in 4 U.S. adults who hold a Synchrony credit card.

Banking Exchange sat down with Mike Storiale, Synchrony’s Senior Vice President of Innovation, Payments and AI, to discuss the future of payments, agentic commerce, and how the consumer experience is evolving in today’s fast-changing landscape.

1. Looking back at the overall payments industry in 2025, what do you see as the biggest transformation in banking and payments?

Looking back at the payments landscape in 2025, I believe the most significant transformation has been the rise of agentic AI—arguably the biggest shift since e-commerce emerged. These intelligent shopping agents do more than answer questions; they act on behalf of consumers, instantly evaluating price, availability, delivery options, trust, loyalty, and convenience across retailers and marketplaces.

We’ve seen early adopters across the industry embrace agentic commerce, with consumers poised to follow soon. While the rules of agentic commerce are still being written, Synchrony is helping to define them.

Our deep partnerships with merchants of all sizes across diverse industries give us a unique vantage point on this disruption. We understand the importance of preparing the entire ecosystem for what’s next.

That’s why our dedicated Agentic Commerce team is collaborating closely with business leaders, retailers, fintechs, wallet providers, credit networks, and technology providers to establish the structures and methodologies for this next generation of shopping. One area I am really excited about is our Synchrony Agent, which we are building to deploy in our online marketplace, which will help us build the foundations necessary to enable our brand partners to fully participate in AI shopping in the right way.

By staying at the forefront, we aim to anticipate emerging payments trends and ensure our merchant partners are equipped to navigate them. This, combined with our agility and dedicated innovation teams, will give us a distinct competitive edge in this rapidly evolving landscape.

2. With technology rapidly evolving, how has the consumer changed, and how will the consumer change in 2026 when it comes to payment behaviors amid the rise of agentic commerce?

Consumer expectations for frictionless, intuitive payment experiences continue to rise, and in 2026, agentic AI will drive the next big shift in payments. Consumers will increasingly rely on AI agents to do the heavy lifting—browsing, comparing, and buying across retailers seamlessly, without needing to visit websites or stores directly. This fundamentally changes how consumers process payments, with the need for merchants to rethink how they show up in this new AI-driven landscape.

At Synchrony, we understand that credit and payments remain core to building trust, convenience, and loyalty—longstanding drivers of brand preference. We’re working closely with retailers to ensure their payment options, rewards, and financing are easily recognized, secure and optimized for AI agents to understand and use, so merchants can create deeper, personalized connections. Smooth, reliable experiences matter, whether it’s an individual or an AI agent shopping.

Looking ahead, digital wallets will start embedding these agents while some shopping agents will act like wallets themselves—making smart purchasing decisions on the fly, factoring in loyalty rewards and payment options.

For consumers, this means faster checkout and more tailored buying experiences. For brands, it means treating AI agents as powerful distribution channels, just as they do digital wallets today, and designing seamless experiences to stay competitive.

3. With AI emerging, fraudsters are getting extremely shrewd. What has Synchrony done to prevent fraud and protect their customers and what will banks need to do in 2026?

For over a decade, Synchrony has built and used a real-time machine learning platform to make credit-driven decisions in seconds while minimizing fraud risk. With machine learning, richer data insights and advanced authentication tools, we’ve gained a deeper understanding of each consumer and reduced fraud.

With the rise of agentic commerce, it’s about knowing the customer and their intent. Trust and security are the foundation of this evolving ecosystem. Banks will need to work closely with payment networks and technology companies to set shared standards and protocols for tokenization, authorization and agent verification, augmented by open banking data and human-in-the-loop checks. The goal is trusted agents, secure transactions between merchants, agents and the customer and frictionless checkout.

Synchrony is helping to define that future today: we’re leading key partnerships with Mastercard and Visa on their advanced agent pay frameworks and contributing to Google's Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) to shape the global standard for how AI agents handle financial transactions, interacting securely and efficiently.

4. Will there be a transformation in 2026 when it comes to credit in general and credit card usage specifically? How will this impact Synchrony’s business model?

In 2026, credit and credit card usage will remain essential, offering consumers the financial flexibility they want and need for what matters most. At the same time, agentic AI and evolving consumer behaviors will transform how credit is accessed, used and integrated into everyday commerce.

At Synchrony, we provide responsible credit access that supports healthier financial lives for tens of millions of people and hundreds of thousands of small and midsize businesses to strengthen the American economy.

Powered by continuous credit and technology innovation, our award-winning underwriting system, Synchrony PRISM, uses AI to make faster, smarter credit decisions by evaluating thousands of data attributes like cash flow, bill payments and partner data, to expand credit access responsibly.

We’re also uniquely positioned to embed financing seamlessly into the emerging agentic AI ecosystem. With our strong merchant relationships, we’re helping the industry adapt to this new model. For decades, we’ve built trust, loyalty, and rewards that drive discovery. As AI reshapes how consumers find products through platforms like ChatGPT and autonomous agents, we’re ensuring that financing options and rewards stay transparent and accessible to both consumers and AI agents.

Our incubation team is piloting agentic AI within Synchrony Marketplace, visited nearly 300 million times last year, to enable frictionless product discovery and checkout. We’re also helping to build a trusted infrastructure by using the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and collaborating on standards like Google’s Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), making loyalty and financing easily accessible to AI agents and to ensure that the real customer behind every purchase is securely understood.

With our latest innovation that we’re building, the Synchrony Agent, we’re aiming to turn AI-driven discovery into seamless purchases, creating a scalable foundation that links partner brands, and their loyalty and financing offers to the broader agent ecosystem, positioning us to lead in the evolving credit landscape.

5. Stablecoins and digital currency in general is one of the hottest topics today when it comes to financial institutions. Will this impact Synchrony in the coming years, and how will digital currency impact payments?

Stablecoins and digital currencies could transform payments much like the cloud transformed banking—improving speed and experience without exposing complex infrastructure and underlying mechanics to consumers.

This creates exciting possibilities and opportunities, especially in loyalty, where stablecoins can power innovative products that add value and flexibility. The focus is on delivering simple, seamless interfaces that connect to these new systems, enabling enhanced payment and loyalty experiences while keeping things intuitive for users. This is where we see real potential to innovate and elevate our offerings for retailers and customers alike.

To learn more about Synchrony’s point of view on where agentic commerce is heading, click here:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/agentic-commerce-rewrite-how-we-shop-heres-synchrony-brands-storiale-rtqte/