• Chris Jones, Managing Director at PSE Consulting


• 23.02.2026 10:15 am
#AI #SaaS

A growing market narrative suggests that AI will “eat” specialist SaaS. But for vertical SaaS platforms that have already embraced payments, such as Shopify and Lightspeed, the opposite is more likely to be true.

For consumer to buy with confidence in this new world of AI shopping three things are required: structured product data, a large network of trusted sellers, and access to modern payment rails which support new agentic standards. Those are precisely the assets that embedded-finance platforms like Toast already deliver. These SaaS platforms provide a single point of aggregation with a pre-made ecosystem for AI shopping agents to access at scale.

Many SaaS platforms already hold canonical SKU-level data, have performed merchant onboarding and risk checks, and are deeply integrated with providers like Stripe and Adyen who are at the forefront of agentic innovation. That makes them the natural execution layer for AI-driven demand.

AI is likely to accelerate the move towards embedded payments which is already underway. Software platforms that once simply enabled merchants to sell can generate revenue can now originate new customers. Shopify, for example used to charge 2-4% to process payments, but is now charging an additional 4% to source AI customers. This moves the margin structure of SaaS platforms much closer to those of marketplaces which can charge 10-15%

In fact, if AI is going to disrupt anyone, it’s more likely to be marketplaces whose historical role is aggregation. In a world where agents can transact directly with the hundreds of thousands of merchants on platforms like Lightspeed, the value of the middle layer comes under pressure.

I don’t believe AI will replace the infrastructure of commerce. It will accelerate it.