PayOS Founder Johnathan McGowan: Agentic Payment Deep Dive and the Future of Agentic Commerce
Co-founder & CEO Johnathan McGowan on Visa, Mastercard, and why he believes “day-one-ready” infrastructure will shape the future of Agentic Commerce.
Johnathan McGowan is the co-founder and CEO of PayOS, a payments infrastructure company built for the emerging world of Agentic Commerce, where AI agents transact on behalf of consumers and businesses.
Before starting PayOS, Johnathan spent seven years in payments, starting his career at Visa, working on QR-based money movement across Latin America, and later joining Tabipay, where he reunited with his co-founder Aparna, a payments veteran with over 20 years of experience in global money movement and risk tools. Together, they founded PayOS to build the connective tissue between AI agents, cards, and trust.
Listen/Watch Our Interview:
If AI agents are going to shop, book travel, and make B2B purchases on our behalf, someone has to make sure they can pay safely and compliantly.
In this week’s episode of Retailgentic, Scot sits down with Johnathan McGowan, co-founder and CEO of PayOS, to talk about what it takes to make Agentic Payments real. From PayOS’s partnerships with Visa and Mastercard to the first live Agentic token transaction, Johnathan shares how his team is building the secure rails that will let agents transact at scale, and why it’s all closer than you think. They cover:
“Day-one-ready” payments: PayOS focuses on making existing cards work for Agentic Commerce, not waiting for hypothetical new rails.
Global scope: Agentic payments aren’t just a U.S. trend; they’re unfolding across global ecosystems.
Partnerships with Visa & Mastercard: PayOS integrates with Visa Intelligent Commerce and Mastercard Agent Pay, enabling secure tokenized payments for agents.
Security first: PCI compliance, vaulting, and tokenization ensure consumers can safely delegate payments to agents.
Beyond checkout: From travel and fashion to complex B2B flows, Agentic Commerce will streamline how buyers and businesses interact.
As AI agents start making real-world transactions, companies like PayOS are making sure those payments are not just possible, but trusted, secure, and global from day one.
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