Our Principal Consultant Eric ten Voorde attended the Futureof Payments conference in Amsterdam last week. One message came through loud and clear from the Dutch payments community: Europe must reduce its dependencyon global players and build more sovereign payment infrastructure.

What weheard on stage

Swift presented an update on their payment schemeinitiative, highlighting progress toward quicker payments with greatertransparency end-to-end. It was a concrete step forward in a space where speedand visibility have long been pressure points for banks and processors alike.

The broader programme reflected the industry's focus onEuropean autonomy, a theme that is growing in urgency across the continent asthe geopolitical and competitive landscape shifts.

What wasmissing from the conversation

Perhaps the most telling observation from the day was howlimited the conversation around agentic commerce remained. While the topic didsurface, Visa among others touched on it, it received only a fraction of theattention it commanded at the US Payments Forum just a month earlier.

As AI agents increasingly initiate and complete transactionson behalf of users, payment infrastructure, authentication, and fraud controlsall need to adapt. The industry's readiness for that shift is worth assessing, andAmsterdam suggested that conversation is still in early stages in Europe.

Do you think agentic commerce should be on the main stageat every payments event in 2026?

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