Picture this shopping scenario. You say, “Find me the best mirrorless camera under $2,000 with a 3-day delivery”. A few minutes later, you get a receipt. No product pages. No coupon codes. No checkout forms. AI agents in shopping scanned global inventory, checked reviews, negotiated the price, and placed the order while you were in a meeting.
This isn’t a beta-lab fantasy. Amazon’s Buy for Me is already testing it. PayPal has an Agent Toolkit built for this type of transaction. Visa and Mastercard are rolling out agent-specific payment rails.
Welcome to agentic commerce. We’ve entered the era where autonomous AI doesn’t simply guide your shopping experiences, it does the shopping for you. Â
Key takeaways
- AI agents in shopping have evolved from tailored product recommendations into autonomous decision-makers that can search, compare, and purchase products or services without human intervention.
- In agentic commerce, algorithms rank products based on quality, specs, and price, giving smaller brands a chance to compete with retail industry giants.
- Real-world adoption is already here. Amazon, PayPal, Visa, and Saks are already deploying functional AI shopping agents that handle transactions end-to-end.
- Two customers to win. Success now means optimizing for both the human shopper and the AI agent.
What AI in commerce actually means and why it matters
In 2024, AI in commerce is already a USD 7.25 billion industry. But the story doesn’t stop there. It’s on track to explode to over USD 64 billion by 2034, surging at a compound annual growth rate of 24.34%.
This trajectory marks the transformation of e-commerce itself. As AI product design scenarios evolve from a behind-the-scenes recommendation engine (so called conversational commerce) into a fully autonomous buyer and negotiator, we’re entering an era of agentic commerce.
“Agentic commerce is not about smarter AI powered chatbots or virtual assistants. It’s about delegating the entire buying journeys to a digital entity that understands your customer preferences, budget, and constraints and acts on them without constant human input.”
‍{{Anna Demianenko}}
Consider the key difference. Conversational commerce requires the shopper to ask questions, weigh options, and click “buy”. Agentic commerce lets you set parameters (“buy coffee when it drops below $12” or “replace my running shoes at 500 miles”) and then forget about it. The AI does the rest.
The evolution that made this possible
The concept of autonomous retail hasn’t arrived fully formed. Rather, it’s evolved in distinct waves.
Each stage built the foundation for the next, transitioning from prediction to creation and, finally, to autonomous action. Understanding this progression is critical for any e-commerce leader preparing for agentic commerce.
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This leap from “knows” to “does” is powered by:
- Advanced AI models that process text, images, and voice.
- Structured product data so machines can “read” and compare items.
- Secure payment tech that supports safe autonomous purchases.
- Live application programming interfaces (APIs) for inventory management, pricing, and delivery data.
Real-world proof agentic commerce is already here
Major players are rolling out fully functional AI shopping agents that handle real transactions. These deployments show how quickly the shift from human-driven to agent-driven online shopping is happening.
- Amazon’s Buy for Me buys products outside Amazon’s marketplace without the user leaving the app.
- PayPal’s Agent Toolkit enables research and checkout inside a chat flow.
- Visa’s Intelligent Commerce secures tokenized transactions with user-set spend controls.
- Saks’ Agentforce uses Salesforce’s agentic AI to meet consumer expectations, place orders, and manage returns.
- SoftServe’s Gen AI Shopping Assistant adds virtual try-on and multimodal search.
Why this flips the power dynamics in e-commerce
Today, big online retailers like Amazon win by controlling the discovery layer. But e-commerce agents don’t care about loyalty points or brand storytelling.
They optimize for objective criteria like price, availability, delivery speed, return policies, and verified quality signals (reviews and sustainability scores).
Agentic commerce changes how value is created and delivered. For shoppers, it removes barriers and decision fatigue. For businesses, it unlocks new, consistent streams of high-intent sales. Here’s how it works for each party involved.
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The double-edged sword of agentic commerce
Agentic commerce replaces clicks and carts with AI agents that buy on our behalf. It’s fast, precise, and ruthlessly efficient. But that same operational efficiency can strip away elements of commerce that make brands memorable and customers loyal. To navigate this new terrain, businesses need to understand both sides of the blade.
The pros
- Hyper-personalized shopping at machine speed. AI agents continuously learn from each purchase, instantly filtering thousands of products to deliver the one that best fits your budget, style, and timing.
- Smooth purchases and higher conversions. Intelligent agents can finalize a transaction the moment your criteria are met, eliminating drop-offs from clunky checkout flows or decision fatigue.
- A merit-based playing field for brands. In an agent-first marketplace, products succeed on measurable quality, competitive pricing, and verifiable specs.
The drawbacks
- Loss of emotional brand connection. When an AI agent is the primary buyer, brands lose opportunities for storytelling, experience design, and relationship building.
- Algorithmic bias and blind spots. Agents make decisions based on the data they’re trained on. If that data is incomplete or skewed, it can favor certain sellers or overlook innovative options.
- Reduced variety through over-automation. In optimizing for efficiency, agents may present only the “best-fit” products, sidelining novelty, niche brands, or unexpected finds that human shoppers might choose.
Turning pain points into power plays in agentic commerce
Agentic commerce is shifting retail’s center of gravity from human shoppers to AI agents. The upside is massive, but so are the obstacles. Winning in this space means tackling these head-on.
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And here’s a handy checklist to test your readiness for agentic commerce:
Now the algorithm is your first customer
Agentic commerce doesn’t kill the shopper. It kills the shopping. Forget the website. The real interface is now the AI agent’s brain.
In this new era, your buyer has two faces: the human and their algorithm. Win the algorithm, and the human follows. Ignore it, and you vanish before the cart is even loaded.
The real winners are brands that engineer their data, policies, and brand values to be irresistible to machines. Because in agentic commerce, if the AI doesn’t choose you, the human never will.
Ready to make your brand impossible for AI to ignore? Let’s engineer it for the algorithms running tomorrow’s commerce.
