Payment insights, straight from the Zebra's mouth
Last week, we welcomed more than 50 customers, partners and industry peers to ICC Sydney for the Fat Zebra Customer Forum. The afternoon focused on the forces reshaping payments: economic outlooks, fraud and friction, agentic commerce, local infrastructure, and what it really takes to deliver reliability at scale.
Friction, protection and customer experience
A key theme from the day was the ongoing challenge of balancing friction and protection. In categories built on speed and convenience (such as food delivery), even a single 3D Secure check can be the difference between a seamless purchase and an abandoned cart. Merchants continue to ask how they can protect revenue while keeping the customer experience smooth.
The rise of agentic commerce
Agentic commerce was another major point of discussion. As automated purchasing through bots becomes more common, brands are faced with a new question: how much of their experience are they willing to hand over?
Luxury brands like Louis Vuitton have spent decades perfecting the magic of the purchase moment. Plush carpets, signature scents and the ritual of presentation all contribute to the brand. When a purchase is reduced to a simple instruction given to a digital agent, that emotional connection risks being lost.
There are also new risk considerations. If a digital agent makes a mistake in the purchasing process, the dispute and potential chargeback still fall on the merchant. This is an emerging challenge that the industry needs to address.
Payments as critical infrastructure
Another strong message from the day was that payments function as core infrastructure. Fat Zebra now touches one in five online payments in Australia, which means reliability cannot slip. Recent global outages have shown that systems which usually operate invisibly quickly become visible when something goes wrong. Our responsibility is to ensure that when payments infrastructure is noticed, it is for the right reasons.
Local expertise matters
Jason from BR–DGE shared how Fat Zebra successfully absorbed all Melbourne Cup Day volume when a traditional bank reached its limits. His perspective reinforced the value of working with local providers who have deep understanding of domestic markets and can support scale without compromising reliability.
Economic signals and merchant priorities
Mastercard provided a broader economic context, noting that consumer spending makes up 55 percent of Australia’s GDP. This highlights why uptime, reliability and customer experience needs to be at the centre of every product and operational decision.
The strength to adapt: resilience and teamwork
Paralympic legend Kurt Fearnley shared a powerful session on resilience, adaptability and the strength of effective teamwork. His stories connected human determination to the challenges many businesses face today, reminding the room that progress comes from both individual grit and collective support.
Our roadmap: Accept, Optimise, Protect
To close the day, Fat Zebra’s Chris Dahl introduced our refreshed roadmap, built around three pillars: Accept, Optimise and Protect. Chris Hurst then brought these pillars to life by sharing real use cases and the outcomes customers are already seeing.
A big thank you to everyone who joined us in the room, especially our guest speakers. You contributed to a brilliant, future-focused discussion, and we can’t wait to do it again next year.
