oneie/one/knowledge/agentic-commerce.md

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---
title: Agentic Commerce
dimension: knowledge
category: agentic-commerce.md
tags: agent, ai, ai-agent, protocol
related_dimensions: connections, events, people
scope: global
created: 2025-11-03
updated: 2025-11-03
version: 1.0.0
ai_context: |
  This document is part of the knowledge dimension in the agentic-commerce.md category.
  Location: one/knowledge/agentic-commerce.md
  Purpose: Animated illustration of a supermarket carriage rolling from left to right, leaving a trail of spark
  Related dimensions: connections, events, people
  For AI agents: Read this to understand agentic commerce.
---

Google's new plan to build trust in AI agents as personal shoppers

Scott Rosenberg

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Animated illustration of a supermarket carriage rolling from left to right, leaving a trail of sparkles in its wake.
Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios

AI agent-driven e-commerce could get a boost from a new Google-backed software standard unveiled Tuesday that aims to make chatbot-enabled purchases smoother and more trustworthy.

Why it matters: Industry analysts expect consumers to rapidly embrace buying stuff with the help of AI — but only if they can count on a chatbot doing exactly what they tell it to do.

Driving the news: Google's new agent payments protocol, or AP2, extends existing standards — like the agent to agent (A2A) and model context (MCP) protocols — to e-commerce.

Google is assuming both consumers and merchants will use "multiple agents built by multiple vendors," Rao Surapaneni, VP of Google Cloud's business applications platform, told Axios.
All these agents will need to communicate in a reliable and trusted way.
Between the lines: The new payments protocol is designed to be able to "prove that a user gave an agent the specific authority to make a particular purchase," "be sure that an agent's request accurately reflects the user's true intent," and "determine accountability if fraudulent or incorrect transaction occurs," according to a new Google blog post.

The goal is to "capture the intent of the buyer" in a reliable way in new kinds of transactions where the human user isn't present but is represented by an agent, Stavan Parikh, VP of payments at Google, told Axios.
Zoom out: The U.S. payments system that has evolved around e-commerce is complex and dependent on a wide variety of powerful players, including Visa, Apple Pay, Amazon, Stripe, Square (now Block), Zelle and other bank-backed systems.

Zoom in: Google says AP2 already has buy-in from more than 60 partners, including Mastercard, American Express, PayPal, Coinbase, Etsy, Okta and Alibaba.

Our thought bubble: An open standard backed by Google could rapidly spread, or face multiple challenges and rivals.

Single-standard systems offer convenience and interoperability, but ecosystems with multiple competing standards can be more resilient and adaptable.
What they're saying: Google's success at bringing partners and competitors like Amazon and Microsoft along with its agent-to-agent protocol shows it understands an "open and collaborative environment" is the best way to build a new ecosystem, Surapaneni says.

Flashback: In the early days of the web, users were reluctant to make purchases on new platforms until they could trust that the technology wouldn't run wild on them and that their credit card info and other personal data wouldn't be abused.

Browser encryption standards like SSL helped make consumers comfortable with web purchases, and Google sees AP2 playing a similar role in agentic e-commerce.

E-commerce is coming to a chatbot near you

Ina Fried

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Illustration of a close up of Benjamin Franklin with upward pointing computer cursor arrows as eyes.
Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios

Soon online shoppers will be able to make purchases straight from their chatbots, which could drive the biggest shift in shopping since Amazon or the iPhone.

Why it matters: Shopping has fueled every internet boom from the dot-com to mobile to social.

Driving the news: Visa on Wednesday announced a push to embed its payment network into AI systems, including chatbots and agents.

The effort is in the early testing stage, with Visa listing OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, Mistral and Perplexity among its partners.
"We think the shift could rival the level of impact that e-commerce and mobile commerce themselves have [had]," Visa chief product and strategy officer Jack Forestell said at an event in San Francisco on Wednesday.
Mastercard and PayPal also announced agentic commerce efforts this week.
How it works: Visa demoed how a user can enter their payment information into a chatbot, just once, and use natural conversation with an AI agent to purchase a range of goods and services.

Under the hood, Visa is incorporating the tokenization technology it has used to secure mobile and online commerce, combined with mechanisms for communicating authentication, payment intent and instructions.
Separately, OpenAI said Monday that ChatGPT search will begin including direct product links in its results, starting with categories including fashion, beauty, home goods and electronics.

Between the lines: The biggest hurdle to so-called conversational commerce isn't technological. It's trust.

"We could give AI agents payment tools today, and they'd be able to go out, access your credentials, your cards, your money, and go spend it," Forestell said on stage Wednesday. "That would just uncover a bunch of other really important problems that we need to get solved before we take step one."
Reality check: Widespread use remains uncertain, even for early adopters.

"I find this one really hard to call," Forestell said, noting that e-commerce has been around for 25 years and still accounts for less than half of sales globally. "Part of me says that it takes time."
On the other hand, he said, "It was 29 months ago when zero people were using [generative AI chatbots]" and now there are billions using ChatGPT, Llama and similar tools.
Forestell is "hopeful that within the next 12 months" people have the option to use autonomous agent payments, at least within certain use cases.
The intrigue: Chatbots will reshape shopping. And shopping will reshape chatbots.

Where commerce goes, advertising tends to follow, as do other means for technology providers to benefit, such as revenue-sharing and affiliate programs.
Google was once free of advertising and commerce, as was Facebook. The tech giants eventually changed the face of both industries, while their services also morphed into something radically different from how they launched.
What they're saying: An OpenAI representative said that the company does not have affiliate links nor does it receive revenue from purchases made through ChatGPT search, nor does it have current plans to do so.

In a video shown at the Visa event, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar said that the company wants customers to have confidence ChatGPT is always "giving them the best answer, not an answer that got skewed by, say, our business model, or a decision on something like advertising."
What's next: Experts say retailers need to start rethinking their e-commerce strategy to prepare for chatbots to play a significant role.

The shift could allow companies to spend less on search advertising, but having the most up-to-date information on products and their availability will become more important, Pimberly CEO Martin Balaam told Axios. His company helps boost revenue for retail clients including Marshalls and Build-A-Bear.
"If your product data isn't pristine — if attributes are missing or inconsistent — you risk being misrepresented or filtered out entirely by the AI engine."

Adobe: AI, discounts to drive record holiday spend despite tariffs

Kelly Tyko

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Illustration of a bar chart made of presents.
Illustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios

U.S. shoppers will spend $253.4 billion online this holiday season, up 5.3% year-over-year, according to Adobe's new forecast out Monday.

Why it matters: Tariffs and inflation are squeezing budgets, but shoppers will lean on discounts, flexible payments and AI-powered tools to stretch their dollars, Adobe said.

The shopping season begins Nov. 1 and runs through Dec. 31, according to Adobe, but the deals are already rolling out at the nation's largest retailers, with early holiday sales this week.
The big picture: 2025 is expected to have the first true AI holiday season.

Traffic from AI-powered chat tools is expected to surge 520% year over year, Vivek Pandya, a director at Adobe Digital Insights, tells Axios, noting it could rise to more than 1,000% on peak days like Thanksgiving.
At the same time, social media commerce is forecast to rise 51%, with influencers driving a disproportionate share of sales.
By the numbers: Cyber Monday is expected to be the biggest online shopping day of the season and year with $14.2 billion in sales, up 6.3% year-over-year.

Black Friday is expected to have higher growth, rising 8.3% to $11.7 billion.
Mobile will account for 56.1% of holiday spend — $142.7 billion — cementing the smartphone as the primary shopping device.
Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) is expected to drive $20.2 billion in online spend — up 11% year over year.
What they're saying: "This will truly be one of the first holidays where we'll see consumers really lean on generative AI platforms," Pandya told Axios.

"With discounts, we're not expecting them to be stronger than last season," Pandya said. "We're expecting them to be kind of on par, a little weaker across a couple of categories, but still quite competitive in this broader retail space."
Electronics will see the steepest markdowns, with prices cut up to 28%, while toys are forecast to be discounted by as much as 27%, Pandya said.
Zoom in: Electronics ($57.5 billion), apparel ($47.6 billion) and furniture ($31.1 billion) will anchor holiday shopping, together accounting for more than half of projected online spend.

The fastest growth is coming from home upgrades and health tech, Adobe said. Spending on power tools is forecast to climb more than 1,060%, activity trackers will jump 1,055%, and home security systems are expected to surge 1,050% compared with average levels earlier this year.
Hot sellers range from Nintendo Switch 2 and iPhone 17 to Dyson's Airwrap and buzzy toys like Labubu dolls.
What to watch: Many of the popular holiday gift categories are vulnerable to tariffs.

"Ultimately, all these retailers have to be able to drive up demand in this moment, so they're going to be looking to try to offer competitive pricing in this promotional period at a very elevated rate," Pandya said.