Agentic commerce is a new model of ecommerce where AI agents shop on behalf of consumers—researching products, comparing options, and completing purchases autonomously.
The model is gaining traction: McKinsey estimates the global agentic commerce opportunity could reach $3 trillion to $5 trillion by 2030. For businesses, this creates an urgent new mandate: to ensure that AI agents pick your product.
In this article, you’ll learn what agentic commerce is, how it differs from the AI tools you may already be using, and what steps you can take to ensure your store is ready for this next phase of ecommerce.
What is agentic commerce?
Agentic commerce is an online shopping model where AI agents make decisions across the entire shopping journey, from product discovery through checkout and post-purchase support. AI agents are software that can independently research, reason through options, and take action with minimal human intervention.
If you’ve added a chatbot to your store that answers customer questions or suggests products, you’re already using a form of AI called conversational commerce. Agentic commerce goes further. Instead of helping a shopper browse your site, AI agents do the shopping themselves. They compare options across stores, check inventory and shipping policies, and complete purchases when the shopper approves.
A chatbot that recommends a moisturizer based on your skin type is conversational commerce. An AI that queries multiple skin care brands, compares ingredients and prices, and picks the best option for you is agentic commerce.
AI engines built on top of large language models (LLMs) can now act as shopping agents, finding products and, in some cases, handling the mechanics of checkout. Microsoft’s Copilot Checkout and Perplexity’s Instant Buy lets shoppers buy without leaving the conversation. Google’s AI Mode checkout is rolling out for select retailers and ChatGPT surfaces products from brands and directs buyers to complete checkout on the brand’s own store.
To enable agentic commerce, OpenAI and Stripe have launched the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) for checkout in ChatGPT, while Shopify co-developed the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) with Google, an open standard for AI-driven transactions.
Shopify also introduced Agentic Storefronts, granting millions of merchants access to AI channels like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, and AI mode in Google search, managed from the Shopify Admin. With AI-driven orders increasing 15-fold in 2025, brands like Keen Footwear and Pura Vida are already benefiting from selling through Microsoft’s Copilot Checkout.
As more AI platforms add agentic commerce capabilities, the list of participating global retailers and small businesses continues to grow.
The technology also has room to mature, and new capabilities are still in development. McKinsey anticipates a near-future in which AI agents autonomously reorder household staples when supplies run low and negotiate prices between a shopper’s agent and a retailer’s agent. They expect AI agents will manage the entire post-purchase experience without human intervention.
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Agentic AI vs. agentic commerce
Agentic AI is a broader concept than agentic commerce. Agentic AI encompasses AI systems that autonomously plan, reason, and execute multistep tasks. It applies to everything from supply chain management to fraud detection and well beyond the business world. Agentic commerce applies agentic AI specifically to buying and selling.
Within ecommerce, you may also hear related terms like:
Programmatic commerce. Automated, rules-based transactions between systems using agent-to-agent protocols.
AI commerce. Any use of AI in digital commerce.
Benefits of agentic commerce for small businesses
Here’s why putting your products in front of AI agents matters:
Reaching high-intent shoppers
According to Shopify’s 2025 Global Holiday Report, 64% of shoppers said they were likely to use AI to some extent when making purchases. This increased to 84% of shoppers in the 18 to 24 age range.
If your products aren’t showing up in these conversations, you’re missing a chance to reach a growing segment of shoppers who are ready to buy. These are people actively describing what they want (for example, in terms of their desired use case and size) and expecting AI to find the right match.
Selling through new channels without added operational burden
Selling on a new channel has traditionally involved managing a new integration and workflow, then creating a new set of listings. Agentic commerce simplifies this process. You can list your products once in a centralized catalog, and it syndicates across AI platforms.
With Shopify’s Agentic Storefronts, for example, brands can have their products appear on multiple AI channels simultaneously. This allows for a more streamlined reach without needing to develop different strategies for each platform. A five-person skin care brand can efficiently showcase its products on ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot without additional operational burdens.
Reducing friction and increasing conversions
According to the Baymard Institute, the average online cart abandonment rate is about 70%. Roughly one-in-five US online shoppers have abandoned an order because the checkout was too long or complicated.
Agentic commerce can reduce some of that friction by improving the customer experience. With agentic payments, a shopper can complete a purchase inside a conversation using stored payment credentials—no need to create an account, navigate to another site, or re-enter payment info. Microsoft reports that when purchase intent is present, shoppers who use Copilot are 194% more likely to complete their sale than those who don’t.
How to get started with agentic commerce
Audit and enrich your structured product data
Build out your AI-facing brand presence
Enable agents to sell for you
Monitor and optimize your AI visibility
Here are some practical steps you can take now to position your store for AI commerce—whether you’re on Shopify or another ecommerce platform.
1. Audit and enrich your structured product data
AI agents don’t browse your store the way humans do. They rely on structured data. Product information like title, price, material, and dimensions must be organized in standard, machine-readable fields rather than embedded in marketing copy or page layouts. This lets the agent determine what you sell and whether it matches a shopper’s query. This data needs to be thorough, specific, and in a format AI agents can read.
That means filling out the standardized product fields in your ecommerce platform completely. It also includes submitting your product catalog to platforms like Google Merchant Center (which shares your inventory with Google’s AI shopping tools) and adding ecommerce schema markup to your product pages. Schema markup is machine-readable code that tells both search engines and AI systems what you’re selling, what it costs, and whether it’s in stock. Together, these forms of structured data ensure AI platforms can find your product information.
Shopify brands can customize their product listing configurations using Shopify Catalog Mapping.
Machine-readable formatting only helps if the product information itself is complete and specific. Start by reviewing your product catalog. Does each product have a specific, descriptive title? Are materials, sizes, and use cases spelled out? A hiking backpack should be described as “40L waterproof hiking backpack with laptop compartment,” not just “Adventure Day Pack, Green.”
Avoid subjective marketing language like “game-changing design” in favor of factual specifications—AI agents don’t respond to hype the way humans might.
Two common pitfalls to watch for:
Variants presented as separate products: If the same shirt in five colors shows up as five different items, an agent may not know they’re related.
Product information trapped in display templates or JavaScript that AI crawlers can’t access.
2. Build out your AI-facing brand presence
Beyond product data, AI agents pull from your FAQs, return policies, shipping information, and pricing data to answer shopper questions. If a shopper instructs an agent to buy only from brands with free returns, the agent will only consider your products if you clearly state your free returns policy.
Include customer reviews and Q&As on your product pages. AI agents use these to assess product quality and relevance when making recommendations.
Businesses that run on Shopify can use Knowledge Base to review and customize the information AI platforms use about their store. It helps to train AI agents on your brand voice and policies so they can field questions across AI channels. The same principle applies on any platform. Publish your policies and FAQs as dedicated pages with clear headings and plain language. Don’t bury this information in accordion menus or JavaScript elements that are challenging for AI crawlers to access.
As you connect your store to AI platforms, review each one’s terms about sharing customer and transaction data. Some platforms share only the information required to complete the order, which may exclude browsing data or email addresses (normally you get this data from a direct sale). If that’s the case, make sure shoppers can opt into direct communication with your brand—for example, with inserts in your packaging or a prominent newsletter signup on your website.
3. Enable agents to sell for you
Think of Shopify’s agentic storefronts as your product catalog, checkout, and brand information packaged so AI platforms can present them natively in a conversation.
As of March 2026, agentic storefronts are available to millions of Shopify users. You will receive a notification in your admin dashboard when your store is eligible. If you are eligible, your products are in Shopify Catalog, and you sell to US shoppers, then your products are automatically discoverable in ChatGPT. For Copilot and Google, go to Settings > Sales Channels, and toggle direct checkout on or off per channel.
Shopify Catalog automatically broadcasts your product data across those channels. Orders flow into your store’s admin dashboard with full channel attribution, and you retain full ownership of customer relationships.
The Shopify Agentic Plan lets brands on any ecommerce platform list their products in the Shopify Catalog and sell through agentic storefronts. The plan connects your products to AI agents across major AI platforms, regardless of where you host your online store.
Open protocols are making agentic commerce work across the ecosystem, working with your existing systems, so you don’t need to rebuild your checkout to participate.
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4. Monitor and optimize your AI visibility
Search for your products in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Copilot the way a customer would. Ask, “What’s the best [your product category] under [price point]?” and see whether your brand shows up. If it does, verify the information. This takes just a few minutes and gives you an immediate read on where you stand.
Then look at the channels where you’re generating sales. If you’re on Shopify, agentic storefront orders appear with channel attribution, showing which AI platform drove each sale. This allows you to compare performance across channels and use those insights to refine your product data and offerings accordingly.
Agentic commerce FAQ
What is agentic commerce?
Agentic commerce is a model of digital commerce where AI agents research, compare, and select products for shoppers, completing approved transactions with minimal human intervention. The AI doesn’t just recommend—it acts, handling the entire shopping journey from product discovery through checkout across AI platforms.
Open standards like the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), co-developed by Shopify and Google, provide the foundation for how AI agents transact with merchants
What is the difference between agentic commerce and agentic AI?
Agentic AI refers broadly to AI systems that autonomously plan and execute tasks—from managing supply chains to detecting fraud and well beyond commerce. Agentic commerce applies that capability specifically to the shopping journey, from product discovery through checkout and post-purchase support, with AI agents helping shoppers find, compare, and buy products.
What does the term “agentic” mean?
Agentic describes an AI system that can act on its own, making decisions along the way rather than waiting for instructions at each step. In online shopping, that means AI agents can handle the entire buying journey, from searching AI platforms to completing checkout, without the shopper needing to click through product pages. Agentic capabilities are expanding as generative AI tools become more embedded in online shopping.
What are the different types of agentic commerce?
Agentic commerce takes several forms. Consumer-facing shopping assistants are AI agents built into products like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot. They find items and facilitate purchases for shoppers. Businesses also use agents internally to automate tasks like inventory management, fraud detection, and dynamic pricing.
In an emerging model of agent-to-agent interactions (still largely in development), AI systems on both sides of a transaction could communicate directly. For example, a shopper’s AI agent might request a discount from a retailer’s agent without either party manually intervening.