Carmela Gómez: “AI will turn online shopping into a conversational experience”
It will soon be enough to spot a shirt we like and just ask a voice-enabled AI device to send it home in our size and in a different color, bypassing the entire traditional online shopping process. Artificial intelligence is set to transform shopping into a conversational experience, explained Carmela Gómez, Global Head of Open Banking at BBVA, at the Sibos financial event. AI will also enable companies to anticipate cash needs, open up new financial opportunities for vulnerable communities, and make access to credit easier for gig economy workers.
AI agents, combined with the ability of APIs to bring financial services into companies’ e-commerce platforms, will change the way consumers interact with digital ecosystems. According to Carmela Gómez, in the future, online shopping will no longer involve visiting a website, manually searching for a product, entering data, and completing a payment. Instead, it will consist of simply stating out loud what one wants and letting a voice-enabled AI device handle the process end-to-end—from finding the product that best meets customer needs to arranging final delivery.
This logic will also extend to businesses. The integration of AI agents into internal processes, in combination with corporate APIs, will allow them to manage critical tasks such as payroll and supplier payments, and even seek financing tailored to the company’s needs. “If the AI agent detects a cash shortfall, it could automatically request financing for a short or longer period—or even make funds available immediately. The potential is enormous,” noted Gómez, who shared these perspectives on the AI-driven future in a conversation with Gemma Godfrey, Non-Executive Director and IBM Partner, and Saket Sinha, Vice President of Financial Services at IBM, during the global Sibos event held in Frankfurt.
The discussion also touched on AI’s value for financial inclusion. Carmela Gómez emphasized that combining AI with digital payments could be transformative for those currently excluded from the banking system—from rural producers selling to large companies to small businesses that depend on micropayments.
AI also holds great potential for gig economy workers, such as ride-hailing drivers, who could gain easier access to credit thanks to data-driven analysis. “These workers have income streams that are sometimes difficult for banks to understand, as we tend to accept a payslip or financial statement more readily. AI and data can help us better understand this type of income when granting credit,” explained BBVA’s Global Head of Open Banking.
Beyond expanding financial services to more people, AI will change how individuals relate to money. The digitization of income and expenses creates a record that, enhanced by AI-powered data analysis, enables better planning of personal and household finances. This traceability opens the door to a future in which even vulnerable or unbanked communities can manage their finances more efficiently and securely.
IBM’s Saket Sinha put the spotlight on the three most common use cases today for agentic AI: enhancing customer service, automating operational processes to make them faster and more efficient, and enabling faster, scalable software development. Regarding this last example, Carmela Gómez pointed out that BBVA already uses AI to perform quality control on its API code, saving days of work in error monitoring and in verifying compliance with the bank’s best practices.
Artificial intelligence is emerging as a key tool to simplify processes, broaden access to financial services, and open up new ways of interacting with money in everyday life.