VGS Wins Gold in 2026 Merit Awards Marketing & Communications Technology Innovation Category for Agent Connect Event

VGS Wins Gold in 2026 Merit Awards Marketing & Communications Technology Innovation Category for Agent Connect Event

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - April 16, 2026 - VGS , the world's leader in payment tokenization and the trusted infrastructure for agentic commerce, has been named a Gold winner in the Marketing & Communications Technology Innovation category of the 2026 Merit Awards.

The Merit Awards is an independent awards program that recognizes global industries and the markets they serve, honoring excellence, innovation, and measurable success. Notable winners in the Marketing & Communications category include Alkami, Charmin, Hitachi, and Hyundai. VGS was recognized for its inaugural event, Agent Connect, an day-long event held in San Francisco on March 3, 2026.

"Marketing and communications continue to evolve at a rapid pace, driven by technology, data, and creativity," said Marie Zander, Executive Director of the Merit Awards. "This year's winners exemplify what it means to break through the noise with compelling storytelling, innovative campaigns, and measurable business impact".

Pioneering the Future of Agentic Commerce

VGS's Agent Connect event brought together over 300 leaders across AI platforms, payment networks, fintech infrastructure providers, and enterprise merchants to discuss the biggest topic in the ecosystem: AI-driven payments.

Agent Connect featured panels with experts from OpenAI, Visa, Mastercard, Shopify, Arrive, Moov, GetNet, Cloudflare, and many more, to explore how autonomous agents will transform transactions.

The notable outcomes of VGS's award-winning event included:

  • Thought Leadership: Establishing VGS as a foundational platform for secure, scalable payments in an agent-first economy.
  • Ecosystem Building: Fostering partnerships and collaboration around agent-enabled commerce to accelerate the development of interoperable standards and infrastructure.
  • Rapid Innovation: Executing a high-impact, strategic event within a compressed two-month timeline.

“This recognition is a testament to the dedication of the entire GTM team at VGS,” said Sr. Marketing Manager Jennifer Marshall. “Our goal was to bring together the brightest minds in fintech to tackle the most significant evolution in our industry today, Agentic Commerce. Successfully hosting this summit in San Francisco and being recognized by the Merit Awards is a proud moment for all of us at VGS.”

About VGS

Founded in 2015, VGS is the world's leader in payment tokenization and the trusted agentic commerce infrastructure relied on by Fortune 500 companies, merchants, and fintechs. Our mission is to transform how sensitive payment data is stored, secured, and used to enable agentic commerce and beyond, where intelligent systems can safely act, transact, and optimize operations.

As the agentic commerce infrastructure that enables merchants and agents to transact securely, VGS tokenizes and stores payment credentials and sensitive data, facilitating optimized and secure transactions. VGS empowers merchants and agents to scale agentic commerce while maintaining the highest standards of security and compliance. The VGS platform also offers a comprehensive suite of solutions, including a composable Card Management Platform, a PCI-compliant Vault, and advanced network value-added services such as Network Tokens, Account Updater, 3DS, and Card Attributes, all designed to integrate seamlessly with existing payment and technology stacks to increase authorization rates, reduce fraud, streamline operations, and confidently support agentic commerce use cases at scale.

At VGS, we're not just securing payments, we're empowering businesses to unlock new possibilities in the ever-evolving payment landscape.

Learn more at vgs.io and by following VGS on LinkedIn.