Imagine telling your digital assistant, “Find me a new running shoe under $150 with free returns,” and instead of sending you a list of links, it does the research, compares models/sizes, applies your existing loyalty discounts, makes the purchase, schedules delivery and tracks shipping — all with minimal input from you. That future is no longer sci-fi. We’re at the agentic commerce moment.

What is Agentic Commerce?

In simplest terms, agentic commerce refers to a new commerce paradigm in which autonomous AI-agents act on behalf of consumers (and sometimes businesses) to carry out multi-step actions in the purchasing journey: discovering, comparing, negotiating, and ultimately transacting.

Key features include:

• The agent not only recommends but executes — with limited human intervention.
• The ability to handle tasks across systems: product discovery, payments, fulfillment.
• Personalization and autonomy — it acts based on the user’s preferences, history, defined constraints (budget, brand, timing) and may even anticipate needs (e.g., auto-reorder).
• Integration with payments and checkout flows designed for AI agents (rather than only human-driven).

Because of these shifts, many think of agentic commerce as the next wave after e-commerce and mobile commerce.

Why Does It Matter?

For consumers, businesses, and the entire commerce ecosystem, this shift brings several fundamental changes.

For consumers:

• Greater convenience: Fewer manual steps, less browsing, more “tell my assistant and done.”
• More personalization & intelligence: The agent knows your preferences, budget constraints, prior purchases — so it finds better-fit items.
• Time saved: Instead of spending time comparing, filling forms, juggling loyalty codes and coupons, the agent handles it.
• Potential for anticipatory shopping: Reordering everyday items before you even think of them.

For businesses/merchants:

• New channel dynamics: The agent becomes an intermediary, changing how discovery, product listings, checkout, and fulfillment need to be structured.
• Need for “agent-ready” infrastructure: Product metadata, APIs, payment/checkout flows, agent-friendly product feeds.
• Opportunity to be ‘where the agent is’: If your product is accessible to an agent in the moment of intent, you can capture purchase more effectively.
• Competition and disruption: Just as e-commerce disrupted physical stores, agentic commerce could disrupt how brands and platforms compete for attention and purchase fulfillment.

For the ecosystem (payments/auth/tech):

• Payment & authentication redesign: New protocols and tokenization methods are being built to verify and govern agentic purchases.
• Standards emerging: For example, the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) is being developed to standardize how agents, buyers, and merchants interact.
• Governance/trust issues: Who’s responsible when an agent buys something you didn’t want? How do you set constraints, revoke permissions, and preserve privacy?

How It Works – A Simplified Flow

Here’s a hypothetical consumer journey to illustrate:

1. You tell your AI agent: “In about three weeks, I’ll be in New York and need a smart-casual outfit for networking dinners, budget up to $400, dress size medium, prefer brand X but open to alternatives, and I want it delivered ahead of time.”
2. The agent reviews your wardrobe history (if accessible), your budget, your preferred aesthetics, brand loyalty, previous purchases.
3. It searches across retailers, filters inventory, compares shipping, return policies, discount offers, and then presents you 2-3 best options (maybe even negotiates discounted shipping or bundles).
4. You choose one (or allow automatic decision if your preference is “pick best”). The agent triggers the checkout: payment authorization via your stored method, shipping info, applies promo codes if available, sets delivery.
5. The agent monitors fulfillment and alerts you when shipped and delivered. In future, it might schedule wardrobe refresh around your next trip.

From the merchant or platform side, supporting this might mean:

• Exposing product feeds and APIs so agents can access accurate metadata (size, color, stock, pricing, shipping).
• Enabling “agent-ready checkout” flows (tokenized payments, authentication, consent flows) so the agent’s actions are legitimate.
• Structuring business rules: e.g., what budget constraints are acceptable, what kinds of substitutions are allowed, returns policy for an agent-initiated purchase.

Where We Are Today & What’s Coming

Today’s state:

• Major players are already piloting agentic commerce. For example: the “Buy for Me” feature by Amazon lets an agent purchase products on your behalf across third-party sites.
• The ACP standard is available for businesses to start implementing.
• Payment networks like Visa and Mastercard are developing agent-specific payment tokens and “Know Your Agent” (KYA) frameworks to support trust.

What’s coming / expected trends:

• • Growing share of purchases orchestrated by AI agents, especially for repeat, low-involvement purchases (household essentials, subscriptions).
  • More seamless integration across platforms: conversational interfaces (chatbots, voice assistants) will not only help you navigate but transact.
  • New business models: Agents may represent consumers, but also businesses, leading to agentic procurement in B2B scenarios.
  • Governance, ethics and standards will become increasingly important: privacy, consent, liability, and transparency.
  • Winners and losers: Brands and platforms that adapt to agent-driven flows will capture new value; those tied to traditional web-click-browse-checkout may risk being bypassed.

Key Considerations & Challenges

• Trust & control: Consumers must feel confident their agent won’t overspend or make unwanted purchases. There need to be guardrails such as budget limits and opt-in consent.
• Data & privacy: Agents will need to access personal preferences, purchasing history, payment info — brands and platforms must be transparent about how they use this data.
• Standards & interoperability: The ecosystem is still early; without common protocols (like ACP) and product metadata standards, many merchants may struggle to plug into agentic flows.
• Business model impact: How do brands maintain loyalty and direct customer relationships if purchases happen via third-party agents? Some merchants may worry about being a utility rather than a destination.
• Technical maturity & hype: While agentic commerce is promising, some analysts caution many projects may not deliver value yet.
• Security & fraud: Agentic purchases open new attack surfaces — how do you verify that an AI agent is acting legitimately on behalf of a consumer and not being misused? Payment tokenization and authentication will be key.

What Should Brands and Merchants Be Doing Right Now?

1. Audit your product metadata and API readiness. Are your product feeds accurate, structured and agent-ready (e.g., size, color, stock, shipping, returns policy)?
2. Explore agentic commerce integrations. Understand how protocols like ACP might apply to your business. Are you ready to receive “agent clients”?
3. Define business rules for agent-initiated purchases. What are acceptable substitution rules? How will you handle returns? What portion of your inventory is “agent-enabled”?
4. Focus on experience and brand value. Even in an agentic world, brand differentiation matters — quality, story, loyalty. Agents may still prefer brands they trust.
5. Prepare your payments and authentication infrastructure. Ensure you support tokenization, secure checkout flows, and can handle purchases where an agent is acting on behalf of a human.
6. Stay transparent and build trust. Communicate clearly with customers about how agents handle their data, how much control they retain, what oversight exists.
7. Monitor the landscape. Agentic commerce is evolving quickly — keep an eye on pilots from big players, shifts in user behavior, regulatory responses.

Looking Ahead: What Could the Future Look Like?

• Fully autonomous purchasing agents: Your agent might monitor your calendar, know when you’re low on supplies or traveling, and automatically order things ahead of time, all based on your preference rules.
• Cross-agent marketplaces: Agents acting on behalf of consumers might negotiate with seller agents; product discovery might happen via agent-to-agent communication rather than human browsing. (arXiv)
• Subscription and experience optimization: Agents could manage your subscriptions (entertainment, wellness, food) to optimize cost, timing and convenience.
• New monetization models: Brands might pay for “agent inclusion” (i.e., being preferred by agents), or earn royalty for agent‐driven purchases.
• Ethical/regulatory frameworks: Because agents effectively act on behalf of humans, regulation around consent, transparency, liability and algorithmic accountability may intensify.
• Hybrid human-agent shopping journeys: For some high-involvement purchases (e.g., cars, real-estate), agents and humans will collaborate: the agent does heavy lifting and humans finalize decisions.
• Emergence of new “agentic” platforms: Platforms may emerge whose primary function is enabling agent-to-merchant interactions, not human interfaces.

Bringing It All Together

Agentic commerce isn’t just a futuristic idea — it’s a rapidly emerging reality. With AI agents gaining more autonomy, businesses and consumers alike face a shift in how shopping is discovered, decided and delivered. For consumers, the promise is smoother, smarter, and more effortless purchasing. For brands and merchants, the opportunity is to be embedded into the agent-driven flow — but only if they adapt.

If you’re a business leader, now’s the time to ask: Are you ready for agents to shop for your customers? Does your infrastructure, your product feed, your checkout experience support the “on-behalf-of” transaction? Do you trust the agent ecosystem to bolster your brand rather than erode your direct customer relationship?

This isn’t just about another channel — it’s about redefining how commerce gets done. The shopping journey is evolving from I browse → I choose → I buy to an agent understands me → acquires what I need → I review or simply receive. And in that switch lies massive potential.

And if you’re not sure where to start, we’re here to help. At Riithink’s digital marketing agency, we help local Chapel Hill businesses rise above the noise blending strategy, storytelling, and search visibility that actually drives results.

Ready to turn your online presence into real growth? Get started today and let’s make your Chapel Hill brand the talk of the town.