A slow-moving tsunami is reshaping commerce. Not the sudden flood that disrupts overnight, but the kind that gives you time to see it coming — if you are paying attention.
Google processes approximately 8.5 billion searches daily. ChatGPT maintains around 542 million monthly active users. The disparity is vast, but dismissing what is happening at the margins of AI would be a mistake. Agentic commerce — the use of autonomous AI agents to handle the shopping journey on behalf of consumers — is still early. But the foundational shifts are already in motion, and the businesses that prepare now will be the ones that thrive.
What Exactly is Agentic Commerce?
In its most advanced form, agentic commerce allows AI agents to autonomously handle a complete shopping journey — from product discovery through to payment authentication — without the consumer ever visiting a traditional search engine or retailer website.
Users initiate purchases via simple prompts. Agents anticipate needs based on habits, personal data, and life circumstances. Full autonomy enables complex multi-step transactions without human intervention.
That full autonomy is still years away. It will require advances in large language models, maturation of the underlying technology, preparation of merchant infrastructure, and robust payment gateway systems capable of handling autonomous transactions. But it is coming, and the trajectory is clear.
The Agentic Shift is Already Happening
Several real-world implementations signal that this is not theoretical:
- In-Chat Purchasing: Perplexity has partnered with PayPal to enable direct purchases within chat interfaces, allowing users to transact without ever leaving the conversation.
- Instant Checkout: ChatGPT rolled out transaction completion features within the application itself, blurring the line between research and purchase.
- AI-Driven Discovery:Google's AI Overviews bypass traditional search results through zero-click search, delivering answers — and increasingly, product recommendations — before a user ever reaches an organic result.
Each of these represents an early-stage proof of concept. But they are accelerating.
The Two Phases of Agentic Commerce
Understanding where we are helps you plan where to invest. There are two distinct phases of maturity:
Phase 1 — Agent-to-Website (Current Stage): AI agents gather information from websites, return recommendations to the user, and users complete transactions within chat portals like Perplexity and ChatGPT. The merchant still fulfils the order, but the discovery and decision-making happen entirely off-site. The impact is already significant: lost website traffic, diminished direct customer engagement, and transactions that bypass your owned channels entirely.
Phase 2 — Agent-to-Agent (The Ultimate Goal): Consumer agents interact directly with merchant agents — placing orders, negotiating terms, handling refunds — with minimal human involvement. This phase requires robust proprietary agent infrastructure on both sides of the transaction. Major players including Google, Amazon, PayPal, and Mastercard are already positioning for this future.
The Disruptive Impact on Traditional Business Models
The shift from Phase 1 alone creates cascading consequences for businesses built on traditional digital funnels:
- Reduced website traffic and customer engagement
- Destroyed retail media revenue models dependent on traffic volume
- Limited customer data collection for marketing and personalisation
- Eliminated cross-sell and upsell opportunities during transactions
- Compromised loyalty and retention metrics
If your business model depends on customers arriving at your website, discovering products, and converting through your owned funnel — that model is under pressure.
The Opportunity: New Revenue Models Will Emerge
This is not entirely negative. Every disruption creates new categories of value, and agentic commerce is no different. New revenue models will emerge specifically for the agentic layer. The businesses that identify these opportunities early, innovate their approaches, and adapt strategically will capture benefits that offset — and potentially exceed — what they lose from reduced funnel interaction.
The question is not whether agentic commerce will change your business. It is whether you will shape how it changes, or have it imposed on you.
How to Prepare: Four Strategic Recommendations
1. Optimise Your Data for AI (AEO and GEO)
AI agents base their recommendations on accessible internet data. Merchants must ensure their products appear as trusted sources in AI chatbots and Google's AI Overviews. This means implementing structured data and maintaining clean product databases, applying the Model Context Protocol (MCP) — the AI equivalent of SEO structure — and actively defining your brand image within the AI ecosystem. Tools like Brand Brain GPT allow you to audit and correct how AI systems perceive your brand before those perceptions reach consumers.
2. Invest in Agentic-Compatible Infrastructure
As agent-to-agent commerce matures, proprietary agent capability becomes critical for market participation. This requires robust API ecosystems that enable autonomous system communication, and ideally, building your own agents rather than relying exclusively on third-party solutions. Walmart has already developed four internal agents performing various operational functions. The merchants who build this capability now will have a significant head start.
3. Choose Third-Party Service Providers Wisely
Payment gateways, delivery systems, and post-purchase services will be critical touchpoints in the agentic commerce lifecycle. Providers that cannot handle autonomous transaction flows — whether due to functionality gaps, security limitations, or compliance issues — will become bottlenecks. Evaluate your current providers against emerging agentic requirements, and plan transitions where necessary.
4. Commit to Continuous Research and Learning
The landscape is moving fast and the answers to key questions are still forming. What factors drive AI product recommendations — price, reviews, information quality, brand loyalty? How should optimisation strategies evolve as the market matures? Businesses that build ongoing learning into their operating model will stay ahead of those that treat this as a one-time project.
The Scale of What Is Coming
Agentic commerce could generate approximately $1 trillion in orchestrated U.S. retail revenue by 2030. Merchants that fail to adapt will face the same fate as those who ignored search-driven commerce in its early days. The transformation requires comprehensive changes to technology stacks, team capabilities, and business models.
The dual reality businesses must navigate: simultaneously serving traditional search-based shoppers and emerging agentic consumers. Neither group disappears overnight, but the balance shifts steadily.
Moving Forward
Agentic commerce is simultaneously opportunity and existential challenge. Success requires moving forward strategically and carefully — not merely adapting to the shift, but actively shaping how it unfolds for your business.
Part 2 of this series explores the technical infrastructure required: the data architecture, payment protocols, and organisational shifts that will define whether your business is ready when the wave arrives.