Agentic Commerce: What European retailers should know about the AI-driven future of shopping

For years, the evolution of digital commerce has been defined by incremental improvements. Search engines became smarter, recommendation systems more personalized, and checkout processes faster and smoother. Yet the basic pattern has remained unchanged: the consumer searches, evaluates options, and ultimately decides what to buy. 

That pattern is now beginning to change. A new concept, known as agentic commerce, is emerging and has the potential to reshape how online shopping works. 

From search to autonomous shopping

Agentic commerce describes a model in which autonomous AI agents act on behalf of shoppers or businesses. Instead of a person manually searching through product listings, an AI agent can handle the entire process. A user might simply express a need in natural language, such as asking for running shoes under one hundred euros that can be delivered today. The agent can then search across merchants, compare products, evaluate shipping options, select the best option, and complete the purchase. 

At first glance, agentic commerce may sound like an extension of tools that already exist. Chatbots can answer questions and assist customers, and search engines help people discover products. Yet the difference between these systems and autonomous agents is significant. 

Traditional chatbots are reactive. They respond to questions, guide users through predefined workflows, or help with small tasks such as tracking an order or locating a product. They still rely on the user to make the final decisions. 

Agentic commerce works differently. AI agents can interpret goals, plan actions, and carry out tasks on their own. Instead of presenting a list of products and waiting for a decision, an agent may evaluate the options itself and choose the one that best matches the user’s preferences, budget, and delivery requirements. 

This distinction has important implications. If AI agents increasingly handle product discovery and purchasing decisions, merchants may no longer compete primarily for human attention. Instead, they will compete for algorithmic selection. 

What this means for consumers and merchants

For shoppers, this promises a much simpler experience. Online shopping can often be overwhelming. Endless product listings, reviews, and comparison pages create decision fatigue. AI agents have the potential to remove much of this friction by handling the heavy lifting. Shopping therefore becomes faster, more personalized, and more convenient. Instead of spending time browsing through dozens of tabs, consumers can simply communicate their intent and let the agent do the rest. 

For merchants, however, the implications are more complex. Agentic commerce also promises several attractive benefits for merchants. It could generate new sources of traffic, streamline product discovery, and reduce friction in the purchasing process. If AI agents can efficiently match consumer needs with available products, conversion rates could increase while marketing costs decrease. 

At the same time, merchants are understandably concerned about visibility and control. If AI agents increasingly handle discovery and purchasing decisions, merchants may find it more difficult to influence the buying journey through branding or marketing. Instead, success may depend on how well products are represented in structured data and how easily AI systems can access and evaluate that information. 

Between hype and reality

Like many developments in artificial intelligence, agentic commerce currently exists somewhere between hype and reality. There are many announcements and demonstrations that show what might be possible in the future, but not all of these systems are fully operational in real-world environments. 

Nevertheless, real deployments do exist. In the United States, some AI platforms have already begun experimenting with integrated purchasing capabilities, allowing users to buy products directly within AI conversations. Behind the scenes, major technology companies are investing heavily in the infrastructure and protocols required to make agent-driven commerce possible. 

For merchants, the most important takeaway is that preparation needs to start now. 

What merchants need to do

In order for AI agents to interact with a merchant’s store, the store itself must become accessible to machines. This begins with making product catalogs available in structured, machine-readable formats. Instead of information that is designed primarily for human readers on web pages, product data must be exposed through APIs or data feeds that AI systems can interpret directly. 

Product details, pricing, availability, and inventory information need to be structured in a consistent format and updated in real time. Only then can AI agents reliably search and evaluate a merchant’s offerings. 

Beyond product data, merchants also need to integrate new technical protocols that allow AI agents to interact with their systems. These protocols define how agents can perform tasks such as searching products, adding items to a cart, initiating checkout, and receiving order confirmations. Implementing them requires new interfaces, authentication systems and security controls within the merchant’s backend systems. 

Payments represent another important piece of the puzzle. Because AI agents should not have access to sensitive payment information such as raw card data, transactions rely on tokenized payment systems. Tokenization allows an agent to complete a purchase using a secure payment token rather than the underlying card details, ensuring that sensitive information remains protected. 

Why Europe is still waiting

Even if a merchant successfully implements all of these technical components, there is a final and often overlooked barrier: platform availability. True agent-driven commerce depends heavily on large AI platforms such as ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini, which act as the interface through which users interact with agents. 

At present, these platforms have only enabled in-chat purchasing capabilities in the United States. Regulatory complexities around payments, consumer protection, and data privacy make the European market more challenging to navigate. As a result, many European merchants who have already implemented the necessary technical protocols find themselves in a paradoxical situation: their systems are ready for agentic commerce, but the platforms that enable it are not yet available. 

A merchant can expose product catalogues, integrate agent protocols, and implement tokenized payment systems, but participation in platform-based checkout programs, such as Instant Checkout within AI interfaces, is currently limited outside the US. In practice, this means that merchants in the EU cannot yet complete transactions entirely within AI environments. 

This creates a strange reality. Technically prepared merchants may have built the infrastructure for autonomous commerce, yet they are still waiting for the ecosystem to catch up. 

Preparing for an agent-driven future

Despite these limitations, agentic commerce should not be dismissed as hype. The direction is clear: AI agents are beginning to reshape how commerce operates.      

In the short term, merchants and payment providers can explore practical workarounds. One option is to make product catalogues accessible to AI systems so agents can surface and recommend products even if checkout still occurs on traditional websites. Another approach is to redirect users from AI interfaces to external checkout flows rather than completing transactions within the AI platform itself. 

At the same time, businesses can begin preparing their infrastructure by supporting emerging agentic commerce protocols and ensuring payment systems are compatible with token-based, agent-driven transactions. Regulatory developments such as PSD3 may also clarify how autonomous agents can safely initiate payments within the European financial system. 

Agentic commerce is not yet fully operational in Europe, but the foundations are taking shape. New standards are emerging, infrastructure is evolving, and merchants are beginning to adapt. 

In the coming years, online shopping may no longer revolve around humans browsing digital storefronts. Instead, intelligent agents could search, compare, and purchase products on our behalf. The technology is moving quickly. In Europe, however, the ecosystem still needs to catch up. 

About Pascal Beij

As Chief Commercial Officer (CCO), Pascal Beij plays a key role in driving Unzer’s growth strategy. Under his leadership, Unzer is building an integrated ecosystem to support merchants throughout the payment process and accelerate their digital transformation. The goal is seamless, easily integrated payment and software solutions to help businesses digitize their processes and meet changing customer expectations. Unzer focuses especially on industry-specific software and payment solutions for small and mid-sized companies. Before joining Unzer, Pascal was Senior Vice President Retail for Central Europe at payment service provider Planet. With over 20 years’ experience in payments and retail, he is widely recognized as an industry expert and thought leader.