Discover Network Director of Payments Innovation Kate Lybarger said that for AI to reshape business models trust must be the foundation. While earlier periods of enterprise innovation, such as mobile and digital, were reactions to external constraints, AI introduces internal and existential pressure. Businesses now grapple with not only how to use this new technology, but also how to deploy it in ways that align with evolving customer expectations and regulatory scrutiny. The stakes are at their highest in security-critical industries like financial services, where transactions can be fast, frequent and sensitive. One of the most notable shifts taking place is the transition across payments and commerce from general-purpose generative AI tools to what’s being termed agentic commerce, representing a more targeted, transactional application of advanced AI technologies, Lybarger said. AI is a means, not an end, Lybarger said. It must be applied with caution, clarity and a deep understanding of what problems need to be solved. How businesses adopt and deploy AI and how they think about managing situations when things don’t go right, because they inevitably at some point won’t, that matters deeply,” she said. “Innovation isn’t only about AI,” she said. “Contrary to all the ways in which we can’t stop talking about AI, it is still, and will continue to be, about solving the right problems in the right way, which may or may not require AI.” That balanced exchange between delivering and capturing value is where AI finds its rightful place. Embracing a level-headed and clear-eyed view of AI’s role in business model evolution can, in turn, raise new organizational questions around deployment and responsibility.