Aug 13 (Reuters) - The increasing prevalence of AI chatbots handling consumer shopping is pushing merchants to uphold more direct customer relationships over fears of losing their loyalty and repeated purchases, payments firm Adyen said on Thursday.

Traditionally, consumers have browsed, logged in and paid directly through online channels. AI-driven shopping assistants could take over that sequence - recommending products, choosing merchants and initiating payments on their own - eroding the direct relationships retailers rely on.

Adyen co-CEO Pieter van der Does told Reuters that a merchant he spoke with this week generated 70% of its volume through direct channels and wanted to retain that share as shoppers increasingly begin their searches through chatbots.

"Loyalty becomes way more important," van der Does said.

Adyen, which processes payments for high-end retailers such as Hermès and Hugo Boss, has introduced a platform designed for enterprise merchants and AI-agent payments, and recently bought loyalty software firm Talon.One and billing provider Orb to strengthen its retention-focused services. 

These moves reflect the expectations that merchants will require robust tools to sustain customer retention and adapt to AI software companies charging usage-based fees rather than fixed subscriptions.

"AI is really impacting our merchants," van der Does said.

"We are their partner, not just for the payments, (but) also for loyalty to make sure that they link their consumers to themselves and that they don't suddenly get disintermediated, that their demand suddenly comes only through LLMs." 

JPMorgan analysts said Adyen's signing of OpenAI as a customer was an unexpected positive in the company's half-year update, as it showed the Dutch payments processor gaining ground among AI companies.

AI is also affecting the infrastructure behind payments. Adyen is pulling forward spending on computing and storage capacity from next year, citing higher prices and supply constraints. Roughly two-thirds of the company's capital expenditures go to private cloud systems running its core services, according to van der Does.