SRC Gives Agentic Commerce a New Guest Checkout Playbook

Agentic commerce promises a world in which transactions happen with less human intervention, fewer screens and fewer keystrokes. The shift may benefit guest checkout.

Despite years of investment in wallets, stored credentials and one-click flows, guest checkout has had its pain points. PYMNTS Intelligence data shows that friction at checkout continues to weigh heavily on conversion, particularly when consumers are required to manually enter payment credentials.

By way of example, and according to “The Online Merchant Checkout Innovation Report 2024,” a collaboration between Mastercard and PYMNTS Intelligence, 60% of middle-market merchants report at least one user-experience problem during checkout, with abandoned carts cited by 36% of merchants as a top issue. Lengthy checkout times follow closely behind, reported by 30% of merchants, underscoring the cost of manual data entry and multi-step authentication. Respondents pointed to low consumer enrollment and confusion between wallets, card-on-file and network-based solutions.

SRC 1.5 Reframes Guest Checkout

EMV Secure Remote Commerce Version 1.5, detailed here earlier this month by EMVCo, changes the calculus. The updated specification emphasizes interoperability, automation and credential portability. The passkey feature allows consumers to authenticate and access enrolled cards without repeatedly entering one-time passcodes, removing a major friction point in guest checkout flows.

Crucially, SRC remains device- and browser-agnostic, unlike proprietary wallets. That matters in an agentic AI environment, where transactions may be initiated by software agents operating across devices and platforms. Instead of requiring a consumer to launch a wallet, SRC enables the agent to surface eligible cards securely at checkout, using network-managed credentials.

Guest checkout has historically carried higher fraud risk because it relies on exposed card data. SRC 1.5 addresses this by combining network tokenization, cryptographic binding and strong authentication. Passkeys, which are based on FIDO standards, allow authentication using biometrics or device-level security. In terms of agentic commerce, his means an agent can confirm a transaction using the same secure mechanism a consumer uses to unlock their device, while the underlying card credentials remain tokenized and protected by the network.

For merchants, this reduces false declines and fraud exposure without forcing customers into account creation or wallet enrollment. PYMNTS Intelligence data shows that 62% of merchants are highly interested in biometric authentication to improve conversion, reflecting broad recognition that security and speed must advance together.

Agentic Commerce Changes the Economics

In agentic commerce, the consumer is no longer the primary operator of checkout. Software agents select products, compare prices and initiate payment. Wallets, which depend on consumer attention and explicit selection, may become less central.

SRC-enabled guest checkout fits this model because it allows artificial intelligence agents to execute payments using pre-enrolled, network-verified credentials without locking the transaction into a proprietary ecosystem. The AI agent can authenticate, select a card and complete checkout in a single flow, even when the consumer is not present. For payment networks, SRC preserves brand visibility and routing control.

The banks benefit as well, as SRC allows issuers to remain the primary point of card enrollment, authentication and risk management, rather than losing visibility to wallets or Big Tech platforms. The banks retain data, fraud controls and customer relationships at the network level.

A resurgence of guest checkout, as commerce becomes increasingly autonomous, indicates the simplest path to payment may once again be the one that asks the consumer to do … almost nothing at all.