Agentic commerce when an AI agent buys for the customer

I

What is agentic commerce?

On September 29, 2025, OpenAI and Stripe gave US ChatGPT users the ability to buy a product without leaving the conversation, and published the protocol that made that purchase possible¹. Visa and Mastercard had presented their first offerings along these lines as early as April 2025⁷¹⁰.

Agentic commerce refers to purchases in which an AI agent acts on a person’s behalf: it searches, compares, builds a cart and, if authorized, triggers payment. The difference from assisted product search is simple. In assisted search, the agent recommends and the customer buys. In agentic commerce, the agent carries out all or part of the purchase, within limits set by the customer.

This delegation raises three questions that payment players themselves put forward. Google sums them up in three words when launching its AP2 protocol: authorization (did the customer really give the agent this power?), authenticity (does the agent’s request reflect the customer’s real intent?), and accountability (who is responsible if the purchase is fraudulent or mistaken?)³. Everything that follows flows from these three questions.

The economic stakes are the subject of projections, not yet of measurements. McKinsey estimates, in an October 2025 study, that agentic commerce could orchestrate up to $1 trillion in revenue by 2030 in US B2C retail alone, and $3 trillion to $5 trillion worldwide under its highest projections¹⁷. This is a scenario, built on adoption assumptions, not an observed volume.

II

What actually exists in October 2026

The announcements fall into two families. On one side, the conversational platforms where the customer makes a request. On the other, the payment networks that must make these purchases safe.

Platforms: discovery is moving faster than payment

OpenAI. ChatGPT’s Instant Checkout launched in September 2025 for US users, first with US-based Etsy sellers, with Shopify merchants announced as coming soon¹. It was built on the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), an open standard co-developed by OpenAI and Stripe, which can be adopted without using Stripe as a payment provider. Stripe added a shared payment token, limited to one merchant and one cart amount, which lets ChatGPT initiate payment without seeing card data¹.

Six months later, OpenAI changed course. On March 24, 2026, the company wrote that “the initial version of Instant Checkout did not offer the level of flexibility” it was aiming for, and that it was now letting merchants use their own checkout flow so it could focus on product discovery². According to analysts cited by CNBC, OpenAI had struggled to onboard merchants, display accurate product data, offer multi-item carts, and connect loyalty programs². OpenAI says merchants can now send their product feeds and promotions to OpenAI, and those who want to go further build an app in ChatGPT: Walmart launched one the same day, with account linking, loyalty, and Walmart payment².

Google. Google announced the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) on September 16, 2025, an open protocol backed by more than 60 organizations, including Adyen, American Express, Mastercard, PayPal, Revolut, and Worldpay³. On January 11, 2026, it added the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), co-developed with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart, and backed by more than twenty other players including Visa, Stripe, and the European company Zalando⁴. UCP covers the whole journey, from discovery to after-sales service, and states that it is compatible with A2A, AP2, and MCP. Google announced at the time that UCP would be used for checkout in AI Mode and in the Gemini app with eligible US merchants, the merchant remaining the seller of record⁴. In May 2026, Google said this checkout would come to Canada and Australia “in the coming months,” then to the United Kingdom, with no date for the European Union⁵. On October 15, 2026, Google began rolling out Universal Cart in the United States, a single multi-retailer cart in Search and the Gemini app, whose checkout relies on UCP; the merchant remains the seller of record⁶.

Perplexity. On November 25, 2025, PayPal and Perplexity launched in-conversation purchasing for US users, with merchants such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Fabletics, and Newegg, the merchant remaining the seller of record¹⁴. Perplexity is also at the center of a legal dispute: Amazon sued it over its Comet browser, which made purchases on Amazon for its users. In early August 2026, the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals lifted the preliminary injunction Amazon had obtained at first instance, finding, at this stage, that it is the user, not Perplexity, who accesses the site¹⁵. The case has not been decided on the merits.

Amazon. In April 2025, Amazon began testing “Buy for Me,” a feature of its app that buys, on a third-party brand’s website, a product that Amazon does not sell¹³. According to Amazon’s page, the feature is in beta for some US customers and a limited number of brands. Delivery, returns, and customer service remain the brand’s responsibility¹³.

Payment networks: Europe is already a testing ground

Payment is the building block where Europe is moving most concretely.

Mastercard introduced Agent Pay on April 29, 2025, with “agentic tokens” based on the tokenization already used for contactless mobile payment and stored cards¹⁰. On March 2, 2026, Banco Santander carried out, with Mastercard, an end-to-end payment executed by an AI agent, “in a controlled environment” and on its real payment infrastructure; the bank then announced a phase of extended testing¹¹. According to Mastercard, all Mastercard issuers in Europe were enabled for Agent Pay at the network level in June 2026, and 36 named banks had carried out controlled agentic transactions, including Deutsche Bank, KBC, N26, Carrefour Banque, and Nickel¹².

Visa introduced Visa Intelligent Commerce on April 30, 2025, with partners such as Anthropic, Microsoft, Mistral AI, OpenAI, and Stripe, on one principle: the customer sets the limits and conditions, and the agent operates within them⁷. On March 17, 2026, Visa launched its Agentic Ready program in Europe first, focused on preparing issuing banks⁸. On July 2, 2026, Visa announced real agentic transactions in Europe, with more than 30 issuers and merchants such as lastminute.com and Frasers, all secured by payment passkeys that Visa presents as supporting compliance with European strong authentication requirements⁹.

Summary: announced, deployed, available in Europe

In France, the first visible case is Carrefour: on March 26, 2026, the retailer launched an app in ChatGPT that lets customers build a grocery cart in natural language, after linking their customer account. The order is completed on carrefour.fr, where payment takes place²². The agent prepares the purchase; the merchant keeps the transaction.

Our take: in Europe, the payment rails are ready earlier than the consumer platforms that would use them. And OpenAI’s experience suggests that the main difficulty is not technical in the strict sense: it is the quality of product data and the richness of the merchant journey.

III

What changes for the merchant

In March 2026, OpenAI said merchants could send it their product feeds and promotions so that their products would be “fully represented” in ChatGPT². In January, Google had added dozens of new attributes in Merchant Center for conversational commerce: answers to frequently asked questions, compatible accessories, substitute products, at first for a small group of retailers⁴. The merchant gains a new reader, one that does not look at the photo.

A product page read by a machine

An agent does not judge a product page by its layout. It reads attributes: dimensions, compatibility, composition, availability, lead time, total price. Information that appears only in an image, a video, or an ambiguous marketing sentence is unlikely to be picked up. The product page becomes a data source before it is a storefront.

This has an organizational consequence. Responsibility for the catalog, often split between e-commerce, marketing, and purchasing, becomes a matter of commercial performance. A missing attribute is no longer just an inconvenience for the customer: it is a product the agent cannot recommend with confidence.

A readable return policy

Google documents structured markup for return policies: policy type, number of days, return fees, countries concerned, with the option of declaring them directly in Merchant Center¹⁸. For an agent comparing two equivalent offers, the return policy is a criterion like any other. If it is expressed in hard-to-read terms and conditions, the agent cannot compare it.

In Europe, the framework already exists: consumers have a 14-day right of withdrawal for distance contracts²¹. Our reading is that a purchase triggered by the customer’s agent does not remove the customer’s status as a consumer. Returns caused by an agent error are therefore likely to land with the merchant, even when the error does not come from them. Amazon says so for “Buy for Me”: returns are handled by the brand¹³.

Recognizing the agent, authenticating the customer

A merchant must tell a legitimate agent from malicious automated traffic. For this, Visa offers its Trusted Agent Protocol and an agent directory, which make it possible to identify verified agents among traffic⁹. Mastercard relies on its agentic tokens¹⁰.

In Europe, there is also the strong customer authentication required by the second Payment Services Directive (PSD2). It applies in particular when the payer initiates an electronic payment, and relies on at least two elements among knowledge, possession, and inherence¹⁹. An agent has neither the customer’s phone nor their fingerprint. Visa and Mastercard’s European pilots also rely on passkeys⁹¹²: the customer authenticates, and the agent acts within the framework thus validated. For the merchant, this means the authentication moment does not disappear. It moves.

Who is responsible in case of error?

The AP2 protocol answers with proof: it provides cryptographically signed “mandates,” one capturing the customer’s intent and conditions (for example a maximum price), the other locking the exact cart approved, to create a non-repudiable audit trail³. American Express chose a guarantee: on April 14, 2026, it committed to protecting eligible cardholders against charges resulting from an error by a registered agent, when the authenticated purchase intent is passed to it, subject to conditions¹⁶.

European law has not yet settled the matter. PSD2 provides that a transaction is authorized only if the payer has consented to it, and sets out the refund of unauthorized transactions¹⁹. It does not address AI agents. Whether the mistaken purchase of a mandated agent is an authorized transaction remains a matter of interpretation. The Payment Services Regulation and PSD3, which are meant to replace PSD2, were the subject of a provisional agreement on November 27, 2025. As of October 23, 2026, they had not yet been formally adopted: the European Parliament’s ECON committee approved the text on May 5, 2026, and the Parliament indicates, as a forecast, a plenary vote on December 14, 2026²⁰.

IV

A relationship with two counterparts

Since January 2026, Google has offered US merchants a “Business Agent”: an agent branded for the retailer, which the customer talks to directly in Search, and which the merchant can configure in Merchant Center⁴. A brand can therefore already talk, in a search engine, with a customer who is not visiting its site.

Our analysis is that this situation will become widespread. The brand will have to talk with two counterparts at once. The first is the human, who has the final say, looks for advice, expresses a preference or a doubt. The second is that human’s agent, which wants accurate data, explicit rules, and a verifiable answer.

These two conversations do not follow the same rules. The human expects empathy, context, a reasoned recommendation. The agent expects confirmed availability, a total price, a readable return policy, and a way to authenticate payment. A brand that invests only in the first risks being passed over by the second. A brand that invests only in the second becomes interchangeable.

The OpenAI case is instructive. OpenAI ultimately let merchants use their own purchase flow, and Walmart chose an app that brings its customer account and loyalty program into the conversation². The relationship cannot be fully delegated. What the merchant can delegate is execution, provided its offer has been made readable to a machine and its promise made clear to a human.

V

What this means for your organization

To our knowledge, none of the conversational platforms mentioned (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Amazon) has announced a date for in-conversation purchasing in France. The European timeline remains open. The useful projects, however, serve your human customers now as well as their future agents.

1. Audit the catalog like a database. Check that every decisive attribute (size, compatibility, composition, stock, lead time) exists as a structured field, and not only in text or an image.
2. Express the return policy as data. Time limit, fees, countries, exceptions: declare them in the formats search engines already read¹⁸, and align them with your terms and conditions.
3. Question your payment provider. Ask for its position on Visa Intelligent Commerce, Mastercard Agent Pay, and the ACP, AP2, and UCP protocols, and how it handles strong authentication for a purchase initiated by an agent.
4. Plan the record. Define what you keep when an agent places an order: initial request, offer presented, confirmation. This is your file in case of a dispute.
5. Prepare customer service for agent errors. An order placed by mistake by an agent will land with your advisors. Plan the procedure, the tone, and the human handoff.
6. Work on your own conversation. A customer who delegates search to an agent comes back to the brand at the moment of doubt. Your site and messaging channels must be able to answer, advise, and close within the conversation.

VI

Where QLOA stands

VII

Frequently asked questions

What is agentic commerce?

Agentic commerce refers to purchases in which an AI agent acts on a person’s behalf: it searches for products, compares them, builds a cart, and can trigger payment within limits set by the customer. It differs from assisted search, where the agent recommends but the customer completes the purchase themselves. As of October 2026, these uses are mainly available in the United States.

What is OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol?

The Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) is an open standard co-developed by OpenAI and Stripe, published in September 2025 to enable purchasing in ChatGPT. It can be adopted without using Stripe as a payment provider. In March 2026, OpenAI refocused its offering: merchants now use their own checkout flow, and ChatGPT concentrates on product discovery.

What is the difference between AP2 and UCP?

AP2 (Agent Payments Protocol), announced by Google in September 2025, deals with payment: it provides signed mandates that prove what the customer authorized. UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol), announced in January 2026, covers the whole purchase journey, from discovery to after-sales service. Google presents UCP as compatible with AP2. Checkout via UCP in AI Mode and Gemini is, to date, open only with eligible US merchants.

Is agentic payment available in France?

Payment networks are already testing in Europe. Mastercard said in June 2026 that all its European issuers were enabled for Agent Pay at the network level, and Visa announced in July 2026 real transactions in Europe, carried out with more than 30 European issuers. However, the purchases in ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity documented to date remain limited to the United States, with no date announced for France.

How does PSD2 strong authentication apply to an AI agent?

PSD2 requires strong authentication when the payer initiates an electronic payment, with at least two elements among knowledge, possession, and inherence. An agent does not hold these elements in place of the customer. Visa and Mastercard’s European pilots therefore rely on passkeys: the customer authenticates, then the agent acts within the validated framework.

Who is responsible if an AI agent buys the wrong product?

European law does not yet explicitly settle this case: PSD2 does not address AI agents, and its revision had not been formally adopted as of October 23, 2026. Industry players offer their own answers: AP2 keeps signed proof of intent and cart, and American Express protects its eligible cardholders under conditions. On the merchant side, keeping a record of every order remains the useful precaution.

VIII

Sources

1. 1

   Stripe, “Stripe powers Instant Checkout in ChatGPT and releases Agentic Commerce Protocol codeveloped with OpenAI”, September 29, 2025. stripe.com

2. 2

   CNBC (Ashley Capoot), “OpenAI revamps shopping experience in ChatGPT after struggling with Instant Checkout offering”, March 24, 2026. cnbc.com

3. 3

   Google Cloud (Stavan Parikh, Rao Surapaneni), “Powering AI commerce with the new Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)”, September 16, 2025. cloud.google.com

4. 4

   Google, “New tech and tools for retailers to succeed in an agentic shopping era”, January 11, 2026. blog.google

5. 5

   Google, “How we’re helping retailers thrive with new Universal Commerce Protocol features and AI tools on Google”, May 20, 2026. blog.google

6. 6

   Google (Suresh Ganapathy), “An intelligent new shopping cart”, October 15, 2026. blog.google

7. 7

   Visa, “Find and Buy with AI: Visa Unveils New Era of Commerce”, April 30, 2025. usa.visa.com

8. 8

   Visa, “Visa Launches ‘Agentic Ready’ Programme to Advance Agentic Commerce in Europe”, March 17, 2026. visa.co.uk

9. 9

   Visa, “Visa and Banks Across Europe Reach the Next Phase of Agentic Commerce, Unlocking Secure Access to Merchants”, July 2, 2026. visa.co.uk

10. 10

    Mastercard, “Mastercard unveils Agent Pay, pioneering agentic payments technology to power commerce in the age of AI”, April 29, 2025. newsroom.mastercard.com

11. 11

    Banco Santander, “Santander and Mastercard complete Europe’s first live end-to-end payment executed by an AI agent”, March 2, 2026. santander.com

12. 12

    Mastercard (Brice van de Walle), “Europe is Building the Foundations for Trusted Agentic Commerce”, June 2, 2026. newsroom.mastercard.com

13. 13

    Amazon, “Amazon’s new ‘Buy for Me’ feature helps customers find and buy products from other brands’ sites” (undated page). https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/amazon-shopping-app-buy-for-me-brands; launch date: PYMNTS, “Amazon Tests Agentic AI That Helps Customers Buy From Other Sites”, April 3, 2025. pymnts.com

14. 14

    PayPal, “PayPal and Perplexity Launch Instant Buy Ahead of Black Friday”, November 25, 2025. newsroom.paypal-corp.com

15. 15

    Engadget (Ian Carlos Campbell), “Perplexity has successfully overturned Amazon’s injunction on its AI shopping bot”, August 4, 2026. engadget.com

16. 16

    American Express, “American Express Debuts Agentic Commerce Experiences (ACE) Developer Kit and Announces Industry-First Protection for Registered Agent Purchases”, April 14, 2026. americanexpress.com

17. 17

    McKinsey & Company, “The agentic commerce opportunity: How AI agents are ushering in a new era for consumers and merchants”, October 17, 2025. mckinsey.com

18. 18

    Google Search Central, “Merchant return policy (MerchantReturnPolicy) structured data”, updated September 12, 2026. developers.google.com

19. 19

    Directive (EU) 2015/2366 of November 25, 2015 on payment services in the internal market (PSD2), Arts. 4, 64, 73 and 97, EUR-Lex. eur-lex.europa.eu

20. 20

    European Parliament, Legislative Observatory (OEIL), procedure files 2023/0210(COD) (Payment Services Regulation) and 2023/0209(COD) (PSD3), accessed October 23, 2026. https://oeil.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/en/procedure-file?reference=2023/0210(COD); Legislative Train Schedule, “Payment services and electronic money services in the internal market (directive)”, updated September 20, 2026. europarl.europa.eu

21. 21

    Directive 2011/83/EU of October 25, 2011 on consumer rights, Art. 9, EUR-Lex. eur-lex.europa.eu

22. 22

    iPhoneSoft, “Carrefour arrives in ChatGPT to do your shopping with AI”, March 29, 2026. https://iphonesoft.fr/2026/03/29/carrefour-debarque-chatgpt-courses-ia; see also Ecommerce Nation, “What if your grocery shopping started on ChatGPT? Carrefour’s strategic bet”. ecommerce-nation.fr