Deep analysis and reporting on how AI agents are transforming commerce - from shopping assistants to autonomous buyers
Walmart executives say their AI shopping agent, Sparky, is helping drive sales—an early indicator of how a retailer-owned agent could reshape product discovery and conversion.
Adobe found shoppers referred to retail sites by AI chatbots converted 40% more often during Prime Day than those arriving from search, email, or social. Amazon is simultaneously blocking rival shopping agents while developing its own assistant.
Amazon is making its AI shopping assistant technology available to other retailers through AWS, with Kate Spade as an early customer, extending Amazon’s agentic commerce infrastructure beyond its own marketplace.
Visa announced new Agent Scoring, Agentic Registry, stablecoin settlement, and token capabilities designed to support safer programmable commerce as AI agents begin initiating transactions.
Grocery Dive reports that many grocers lack their own AI shopping tools and may rely on Instacart as a connection layer between store catalogs and agents such as ChatGPT.
Retail Systems reports that PayPal is powering native in-app checkout for Hey Savi’s AI fashion shopping experience, with Debenhams Group joining as the first retail adopter.
Adyen introduced Adyen Agentic, a modular API suite intended to connect enterprise merchants with AI shopping agents across product discovery, transaction, and payment workflows.
A Google-linked Universal Commerce Protocol update describes an open architecture for checkout, catalog, cart, orders, REST, MCP, and A2A transport, with Shopify, Walmart, Target, Etsy, Adyen, Mastercard, Stripe, and Visa named as partners.
Target is expanding conversational shopping across Google, Microsoft Copilot, and ChatGPT, tying product discovery, account access, loyalty benefits, and checkout into the AI surfaces where more shoppers are beginning their journeys.
Visa is embedding its payment network into ChatGPT so AI agents can shop and complete transactions for users, a clear signal that payment authorization is moving into agent-mediated commerce flows.
Conferences & summits on our radar
Amazon is connecting AI discovery, external merchant feeds, checkout, advertising, and agent-access rules into a controlled shopping stack. What that means for DTC brands.
A practical guide to Shopify’s agentic-commerce distribution advantage: one merchant operation made available across AI shopping surfaces, and the readiness work brands still own.
A practical guide to separating protocol specifications, integrations, and merchant-ready operations—without mistaking vendor marketing for deployment evidence.
Stripe explains how businesses should think about agentic commerce, including agent-led shopping flows, checkout readiness, payment infrastructure, and the operational steps needed to support AI shopping assistants.
PYMNTS Intelligence argues that delegated AI shopping will force payments companies to rethink authorization, identity, risk, and transaction context as agents begin acting on behalf of consumers.
Harvard Business Review summarizes research showing that familiar e-commerce tactics such as scarcity cues, coupons, bundles, and countdowns often fail to move AI shopping agents, while pricing and au
Zero Click Project documents and analyzes the transformation of commerce as AI agents evolve from shopping assistants to autonomous buyers. We provide the intelligence layer for understanding agentic commerce.
As search engines, AI chatbots, and voice assistants increasingly answer queries and complete transactions without users clicking through to websites, the entire digital commerce landscape is being rewritten. This isn't a distant future - it's happening now.
Our mission is to help merchants, platforms, and technology providers navigate this shift with clarity, data, and actionable insights.
