The Truth About Agentic Commerce: What Merchants Really Want

Michael Johnson · 2026-09-23

There's a growing gap between the hype around agentic commerce and what's actually happening on the ground. It's not that AI agents can't do the job—or that the infrastructure isn't ready. It's just that we're still in the early days, and merchants are trying to figure out where they fit. Many merchants still hear "agent" and think of independent sales organization (ISO) reseller agents, not artificial intelligence. That confusion says a lot about where we are. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Hilla Peled, SVP of AI & Data Science at Nuvei, and Don Apgar, Director of Merchant Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research, dug into agentic commerce from the merchant's point of view. Their main takeaway? The biggest concern isn't technology—it's trust. ### Preparing for the Agentic Revolution AI is already woven into consumers' daily lives. People use it to compare prices, discover products, and make decisions. Autonomous personal shoppers are just the next logical step. But most merchants aren't rushing to adopt agentic commerce just because it's trendy. They're willing to support it—but not if it means risking funds or expanding PCI scope. "Merchants aren't saying, 'give me a shopping agent,'" Apgar said. "They want to be prepared for when their customers show up with shopping agents. Mostly, they're trying to figure out what this means, which standard will win, and how they should think about their architecture and their place in agentic commerce." That's a lot of uncertainty. Businesses are watching how transactions will settle and which standards will govern interactions. One of the biggest questions: who owns the agent? Is it acting for the consumer, the merchant, or the AI company that built it? Getting that straight will shape how everyone approaches agentic payments. The goal is to build trust—to make sure an agent reliably does what it's supposed to and delivers what the customer expects. That's a tall order given all the fraud and security risks, like bad actors manipulating agents, consumers, or merchants. "One of the biggest things we see is the gap between what customers are doing with public agents and what PSPs and acquirers are willing to take on," Peled said. "Everyone is preparing for the point where agentic commerce becomes much wider." And it's already happening. "We know that 1.5% of purchases in the U.S. have been agentic," she said. "That's huge when you think about where we are. At the same time, customers, merchants, and everyone in e-commerce is wondering, 'What do we need to do to be ready when agentic commerce explodes?'" ### Volume Follows Trust To get a clearer picture, Nuvei studied consumer attitudes. They found that only about 1% of people wanted fully automated AI purchasing. And 56% said they would never let an AI platform spend without their approval, no matter the amount. That might sound like a roadblock. But history shows that consumer preferences can shift as trust builds. Remember when people were hesitant to use credit cards online? Now it's second nature. The same could happen with agentic commerce. As agents prove themselves reliable and secure, more consumers will delegate. But it won't happen overnight. Merchants need to be ready—not by jumping in blindly, but by understanding the risks, watching the standards, and building trust with their customers. The future of agentic commerce isn't about replacing human decision-making. It's about extending it. And that's something merchants can get behind.