Why 56% of Shoppers Won't Let AI Spend Their Money

Michael Johnson · 2026-09-23

There's a growing gap between the hype around agentic commerce and what's actually happening on the ground. That's not a knock on AI agents or the infrastructure being built to support them. It just means we're still early. Here's something telling: many merchants still hear the word "agent" and think of independent sales organization (ISO) reseller agents, not artificial intelligence. That disconnect 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 side. Their big takeaway? The real question isn't whether the tech works. It's whether businesses can earn customer trust as this model evolves. But make no mistake: the move toward agentic commerce isn't slowing down. If anything, now's the time for merchants and providers to build strategies and get ready for a world where AI agents handle a lot more shopping. ### Preparing for the Agentic Revolution AI is already woven into everyday life. People lean on it for all kinds of tasks, and shopping is no exception. Consumers are using AI to compare prices and find products right now. Autonomous personal shopping agents are just the next logical step. Most merchants want to support that shift. They just don't want to compromise their funds or expand their PCI scope to do it. > "Merchants aren't saying, 'give me a shopping agent,' but they want to be prepared to the extent that their customers show up with shopping agents," Apgar said. "Largely, they're trying to figure out what this means, which standard will prevail, and how they should look at their architecture and their position in agentic commerce." Businesses are watching the technical details closely. How will transactions settle? Which standards will govern interactions? And who actually owns the agent, anyway? That last question matters more than it sounds. An agent could act on behalf of the consumer, the merchant, or the AI company that built it. Figuring out that responsibility shapes how everyone approaches agentic payments. The goal is trust. An agent has to reliably do what it's told and deliver an outcome that matches customer expectations. That's a tall order given the fraud and security risks, including bad actors trying to manipulate agents, consumers, or merchants. ### Volume Follows Trust Nuvei ran a study to understand where consumers actually stand. The findings are worth sitting with: - Only about 1% of respondents wanted fully automated AI purchasing - 56% said they'd never let an AI platform spend without their approval, no matter the amount - 1.5% of U.S. purchases are already agentic, which is striking given how young this space is "One of the biggest things that we observe is the gap between what customers are doing when adopting the public agents versus what the PSPs and acquirers are willing to take on," Peled said. "Everyone is now just preparing themselves to the point where agentic commerce will become much wider." Those numbers might look like a problem for agentic commerce. But past technology shifts show that consumer preferences can move fast once trust is earned. People didn't trust online banking at first either. The takeaway for merchants? Don't wait for the explosion. Get your architecture, standards, and security in order now, so when customers show up with their agents, you're ready to meet them.