Adyen, Airwallex, and Checkout.com to Debate Future of Acquiring at PSE Consulting Conference

Senior payment leaders from Adyen, Airwallex, and Revolut are convening in London this November to address the rapid evolution of merchant acquiring. As the industry grapples with the rise of agentic commerce and embedded finance, this gathering marks a critical juncture for providers navigating shifting consumer behaviors and the integration of AI into the transaction lifecycle.

What was announced

PSE Consulting’s Merchant Acquiring Conference returns to Merchant Taylors' Hall, London, on 17 November. Marking its 15th anniversary, the event serves as a forum for senior payments leaders to debate the structural shifts currently redefining the market. The discussions are set to focus on five core pillars: agentic commerce, embedded finance, marketplaces, AI-driven fraud, and operational resilience.

The conference arrives as new research from PSE Consulting highlights a significant change in how UK small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) manage payments. Data shows that 23% of UK SMBs now utilize embedded payments services through their SaaS platforms, a sharp increase from 11% in 2024. Furthermore, 46% of these businesses have been offered embedded services by software platforms, compared to 22% two years ago.

Consumer expectations are also shifting; PSE’s research indicates that 74% of AI-active shoppers prefer using an independent AI assistant, while 93% anticipate maintaining or increasing their use of digital marketplaces. The speaker lineup features representatives from Adyen, Revolut, ACI Worldwide, Airwallex, Checkout.com, EPI/Wero, Forter, Tide, TrueLayer, and Vinted Pay UK. Since its inception in 2011, the conference has hosted over 160 speakers and 2,000 attendees from 650 payments companies, previously highlighting trends such as open banking and payment orchestration.

"Getting agentic commerce to work at scale is a payments problem as much as an AI one. It needs standards that give consumers a low-friction experience without loading intermediaries with risk. That's a conversation for acquirers, PSPs, schemes and merchants together and it's exactly the one we want to have in the room on 17 November."

Chris Jones, Managing Director at PSE Consulting

The companies involved

The conference is organized by PSE Consulting, a specialist firm that has been a fixture in the payments landscape for over a decade. The event brings together several of the industry's most influential players, including Adyen, a global payments platform that provides end-to-end infrastructure, and Checkout.com, which has established itself as a major force in digital commerce and recently expanded its reach into in-person payment solutions.

Also participating is Airwallex, a fintech unicorn focused on global financial infrastructure for modern businesses, facilitating cross-border transactions and treasury management. These companies represent a significant portion of the modern merchant acquiring ecosystem, often competing to provide the underlying rails for the "embedded" shift identified in PSE’s research. The presence of newer entrants like Revolut and Tide alongside established infrastructure providers like ACI Worldwide underscores the convergence between traditional banking, digital-first platforms, and software-led payment services. Collectively, these organizations manage a massive volume of digital transactions across Europe and beyond, making their consensus on standards for AI and agentic commerce particularly influential for the broader sector.

What FF News has reported before

FF News has closely tracked the strategic expansions of the companies attending this year’s conference. Recently, we covered how Boost Payment Solutions and Airwallex Partnership Drives 10x Growth in B2B Cross-Border Volume, highlighting the scale of international B2B payments. Airwallex’s global footprint was further noted when Airwallex and ONE Store Partner to Scale Korean Gaming Globally.

In the acquiring space, Checkout.com has been particularly active. We reported that Checkout.com Enters In-Person Payments Market with Mollie Partnership, a move that signals a push toward omnichannel capabilities. Additionally, the company’s role in supporting major global brands was emphasized when Samsung Taps Checkout.com for Global Digital Commerce and Samsung Pay Expansion, illustrating the high-stakes nature of the digital commerce partnerships being discussed in London this November.

What this means

The shift toward agentic commerce—where AI assistants act as intermediaries in the purchase journey—presents a fundamental challenge to the traditional merchant-acquirer relationship. If the point of purchase moves away from the merchant’s own interface and into an independent AI environment, the current models for risk, authentication, and brand loyalty are under immediate pressure. The industry is currently at a crossroads: either develop unified standards that accommodate these autonomous agents or risk a fragmented ecosystem where transaction risk becomes unscalable. For acquirers and PSPs, the prize is no longer just processing the payment, but maintaining relevance in a world where the "shopper" may no longer be a human.