YeahPay, the international payment brand of Yeahka Limited, highlighted a major shift in the payments industry from processing to discovery and decision at the Platform Leaders Forum of Stripe Tour in Shanghai. David Tay, Global Vice President of YeahPay, shared insights on how artificial intelligence is reshaping where payment platforms sit in the broader commerce journey and the future of technology platforms.
As AI plays a greater role in how consumers discover products, evaluate options and make purchasing decisions, the boundaries between discovery, decision-making and payment are beginning to blur for global merchants and consumers.
David Tay, Global Vice President of YeahPay, the international payment brand of Yeahka Limited (9923.HK), believes AI is beginning to reshape where payment platforms sit in the broader commerce journey. As AI influences how consumers discover products, evaluate options and make purchasing decisions, the value proposition for payment platforms is evolving.
“Value is migrating from processing the transaction to being present at the point of discovery and decision,” Tay said.
For payment platforms, this could broaden the role they play in commerce. Rather than focusing solely on processing more transactions, platforms may increasingly need to consider merchant discoverability, customer engagement and payment acceptance as parts of the same integrated journey.
Yeahka has already started this shift through its work in agentic payments and commerce. The company has developed agentic commerce flows with industry partners, drawing on its merchant reach and payments experience to explore how businesses can operate in an environment where transactions may increasingly be initiated by both people and AI agents.
The goal is to make it easier for merchants to participate in AI-driven commerce, from making products discoverable through large language models to supporting new forms of payment interaction.
The company is also extending AI further into merchant operations. Its AI-powered digital employees support global merchants across customer enquiries, product and service recommendations, bookings, payments, CRM and repeat purchases. These initiatives reflect a broader effort to connect the different stages of the merchant journey by combining AI-driven customer interactions with payment and merchant service capabilities.
Looking further ahead, Tay expects the platform landscape to become more differentiated. Platforms with durable businesses are likely to move either deeper into regulated capabilities that require time and permissions to build, or deeper into specialised workflows that general-purpose platforms cannot easily serve.
As the interfaces through which consumers discover, buy and pay continue to evolve, the ability to maintain the underlying customer relationship could become an increasingly important measure of platform strength.
“The real test is whether the customer relationship is still yours when the storefront changes,” Tay said.
This shift underscores how payment-based technology platforms must integrate discovery, engagement, transactions and ongoing customer management to remain competitive in AI-driven commerce.
ABOUT YEAHKA
Yeahka Limited is a leading payment-based technology platform, dedicated to creating value for merchants and consumers. The company was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2020 under stock code 9923.HK. Yeahka serves approximately 9.2 million merchants and nearly 1 billion consumers.
YeahPay is the international payment brand of Yeahka, offering secure, seamless, and efficient digital financial services to global clients, spanning global acquiring, global collection, foreign exchange, global remittance, and beyond. It onboards and acquires for merchants across seven markets, supporting multi-currency processing, local payment methods, and integration options from payment links to ecommerce plugins and platform onboarding.
