AI The State of Agentic Commerce and What It Means for Your Business

There’s no denying that agentic commerce is moving at a breakneck pace. Consumers are rapidly adapting to the brave new world of AI-assisted shopping for product discovery and consideration, while remaining wary of fully autonomous purchasing. At the same time, recent moves from Google’s push toward open protocols to brands and Sephora creating its own ChatGPT app show an ecosystem taking shape in real time.

This is how we see agentic commerce progressing based on the latest news and developments in the industry.

AI Adoption Is Real, but Uneven Across the Funnel

AI-assisted shopping continues to rise, with 63% of European consumers (McKinsey) using AI for comparing options like brands, models, prices and reviews, and 65% of American shoppers (YouGov) trusting AI to compare prices.

At the same time, the latest data on consumer trust in autonomous purchases varies widely: While a recent survey from payment provider Adyen found that over half of US shoppers would trust AI for autonomous shopping, YouGov’s data shows that only 14% of US consumers trust AI to place orders on their behalf. The reality is that agentic checkout isn’t there yet.

One of the main barriers to a fully agentic adoption is data accuracy, to the point that 79% of consumers (Contentsquare) say it’s the most important factor in AI-powered shopping.

Key patterns shaping this shift include:

• AI is now a primary interface for discovery and comparison

• Trust is highest for accuracy and lowest for autonomy

• Consistent, reliable outputs drive gradual adoption

For brands and retailers, this means visibility in AI-driven environments is now critical, which must be backed by high-quality, structured and real-time data. Inaccurate or inconsistent information doesn’t just reduce conversion; it erodes trust in AI-mediated experiences altogether.

Transactions Are Still Catching Up

The industry is converging on a clear pattern: AI excels at guiding decisions but struggles to execute transactions. Even major players are adjusting course.

OpenAI’s pause of in-chat checkout and Walmart’s significantly lower conversion rates on ChatGPT both point to the same insight: Users still prefer completing purchases in familiar, trusted environments. Discovery may start in AI, but transactions often move elsewhere.

At the same time, different models are emerging:

• Open ecosystems, such as the launch of Google’s UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol), aim to connect agents, merchants and payments.

• Closed ecosystems (e.g., Amazon) integrate discovery, decision and transaction end-to-end, with Amazon recently investing in OpenAI and continually investing in its own “buy for me” capability and Rufus, its AI-enabled conversational interface.

Today’s landscape is fragmented as many large players try to own the market on their terms. For now, the winning strategy for brands and retailers is to lay the foundation for agentic commerce, keeping all avenues open as the industry shapes up.

Brands Are Reclaiming Control

Early expectations suggested AI platforms might disintermediate brands. Instead, brands are reasserting control by embedding their own logic, data and experiences into AI-driven journeys.

Rather than outsourcing the entire customer relationship, leading retailers are:

• Integrating their own AI assistants into external platforms.

• Anchoring transactions within their own environments.

• Connecting AI-driven discovery to loyalty programs and owned channels.

This approach ensures that even when interactions begin in third-party interfaces, the underlying relationship, including data, personalization, and conversion, remains within the brand’s ecosystem.

In this model, control doesn’t come from owning the interface. It comes from owning the infrastructure behind it. For brands and retailers, this means not only investing in agentic commerce within AI channels like Google’s Gemini or ChatGPT, but also leveraging AI across their own touchpoints.

Trust, Security and Identity

As commerce shifts toward AI agents, traditional identity and security models are no longer sufficient.

The challenge is significant, with AI adoption accelerating faster than governance and security frameworks can keep up. Many organizations lack visibility into agent activity, and incidents involving AI-driven fraud and misuse are already on the rise.

For instance, Only 24.4% of organizations (Gravitee) have full visibility into AI agents, and more than half of the agents run without security oversight or logging. The same survey notes that 88% of organizations had confirmed or suspected AI agent incidents in the past year.

Key priorities emerging across the industry are:

• Establishing non-human (agent) identity and authorization

• Ensuring full visibility and traceability of agent actions

• Aligning with evolving standards for governance and accountability

Without these foundations, scaling agentic commerce introduces significant operational and reputational risks.

Key Takeaway: Start with Foundational Readiness

Agentic commerce is not a single shift toward autonomous checkout. It’s a layered evolution where discovery, decision-making, transactions and trust are advancing at different speeds.

Today, the biggest impact is at the top of the funnel, where AI is redefining how customers find and evaluate products. Tomorrow, differentiation will come from the ability to orchestrate seamless, end-to-end experiences across channels and ecosystems.

That shift depends on foundational readiness:

• Clean, structured and accessible product data.

• Connected systems across discovery, checkout and loyalty.

• Consistent, trustworthy customer experiences.

The brands that succeed won’t just adopt agentic capabilities; they’ll build the infrastructure required to scale them reliably.

Want to learn more about how to succeed in an agentic commerce era? Contact us to get ahead of the curve and start building the right infrastructure. 

This guest article is brought to you in collaboration with:The Author:  Mary Rebecca Harakas is a Senior Product Marketing Manager at commercetools and subject matter expert on Agentic Commerce. With over a decade of experience across product and marketing teams, she excels at crafting GTM strategies and positioning products to drive growth and deliver value.