The AI Trust Gap: Why APAC Shoppers Embrace Recommendations but Fear Checkout
Visa's 15,000-consumer APAC study reveals critical disconnect: shoppers embrace AI product discovery but resist AI payments. Security assurances key to unlocking adoption.
A new Visa survey of nearly 15,000 consumers across 14 Asia Pacific markets has uncovered a critical disconnect in digital commerce: while 74% of shoppers use AI-powered tools to discover and research products, 32% refuse to share payment information with AI systems at checkout.
The State of Digital Commerce in Asia Pacific 2025 study, conducted by YouGov and released February 10, 2026, surveyed 14,764 consumers and found that trust collapses precisely when AI moves from product recommendations to handling financial transactions. This gap is most pronounced in digitally advanced markets, where Australia (38%), New Zealand (37%), and Singapore (34%) showed above-average concerns about sharing payment data with AI.
Affluent Consumers Show Highest Resistance
The survey revealed an unexpected pattern: wealthier consumers demonstrate greater caution toward AI payments than lower-income groups. Thirty-nine percent of affluent households expressed heightened expectations for data usage in AI payments, compared to 29% in lower-income groups.
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This creates a strategic challenge for brands targeting high-value consumer segments. The very demographic most attractive to marketers shows the strongest resistance to AI-powered checkout systems.
Regional variations further complicate the picture. India and Vietnam lead adoption with 42% of consumers in each market willing to use AI for online purchases. Meanwhile, Singapore and Japan recorded the lowest openness at just 14%, despite their status as digitally mature economies.
"As AI becomes part of the checkout experience, trust and control become even more important," said T.R. Ramachandran, Visa's Head of Products & Solutions for Asia Pacific. "Consumers want to understand how their data is being used and feel confident that every transaction is secure."
Security Infrastructure as Primary Unlock
The research suggests security measures, not AI functionality itself, represent the main barrier to adoption. Forty-five percent of consumers said stronger payment security assurances would increase their openness to AI-powered commerce.
Authentication friction compounds the trust problem. Six in 10 Asia Pacific respondents faced payment issues in the past year due to forgotten card details and missed one-time passwords. This creates additional hesitancy when AI enters the checkout process.
Visa's data shows tokenization reduces fraud rates by 34% compared to traditional card-based transactions in Asia Pacific, while biometric authentication can reduce fraud by up to 50% versus one-time passwords.
Twenty-six percent of consumers expressed uncertainty about whether AI recommendations serve their best interests, revealing fundamental doubts about AI-powered shopping guidance systems.
Industry Response and 2026 Pilots
Visa announced its Intelligent Commerce platform on November 12, 2025, at the Singapore Fintech Festival, introducing the Trusted Agent Protocol to address a projected 4,700% surge in AI-driven retail traffic across Asia Pacific.
The company completed hundreds of secure agent-initiated transactions with partners including Ant International, Microsoft, Stripe, and Tencent in October 2025. Asia Pacific pilots for Intelligent Commerce are scheduled for early 2026.
The platform aims to enable "agentic commerce," where AI agents autonomously select products and complete transactions based on user preferences. However, the survey indicates consumers need visible payment controls before accepting this model at scale.
Singapore exemplifies the regional caution, with 95% of consumers expressing concerns about using AI with their bank, citing privacy and data security as top priorities.
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