AI Transforms the Prompt Economy Into the Purchase Economy

As retail enters the emerging Prompt Economy, where autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) agents don’t just suggest but act, autonomy is becoming the defining edge in commerce for retailers.

Findings in “The Prompt Economy: How AI Agents Turn Conversation into Commerce,” a report by PYMNTS Intelligence created in collaboration with Visa, revealed that, increasingly, the difference between a browsing session and a purchase comes down to whether AI is ready to answer not just with information, but with action.

A request, in other words, that ultimately becomes a done deal.

The last decade of retail innovation revolved around prediction. Recommendation engines told shoppers what they might like. Forecasting models helped merchants anticipate demand. Chatbots delivered answers, albeit often clumsily.

Then came generative AI, and everything changed.

But as the PYMNTS Intelligence report noted, generative AI generates content; agentic AI generates outcomes.

That distinction is critical. A generative system may list the top five vacuum cleaners. An agentic system compares features, checks reviews, applies loyalty credits and completes the purchase on your behalf, all while flagging a potential shipping discount the shopper may not have known existed.

This leap from passive assistance to active execution is poised to collapse user friction in the shopping journey.

The Reinvention of Commerce

Instead of waiting for humans to press “buy,” commerce is being restructured today around prompts as the new interface. What emerges is a new operating system.

Retailers are increasingly reorienting technology stacks so that agents and not consumers are able to initiate and close the loop on transactions. For this ecosystem to function, infrastructure matters. As the PYMNTS report outlined, agentic AI builds on traditional generative AI stacks but adds autonomy as a layer.

Foundation models are still at the base. On top sit company-specific datasets, retrieval systems and orchestration frameworks like LangChain. Guardrails enforce compliance. The breakthrough comes with standards such as the Model Context Protocol (MCP), described as a “USB-C for agents.” MCP allows systems built by Visa, Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic to interoperate securely and efficiently.

In practice, that means a shopping agent can check stock levels, apply a Visa-secured payment credential, book freight from a logistics partner and update a retailer’s inventory system—all without human handoffs. It is not simply about smarter tools. It is about autonomous actors within commerce ecosystems.

Read the report: The Prompt Economy: How AI Agents Turn Conversation into Commerce

Retailers are already testing these waters. Walmart’s Super Agent pilots consolidate product reviews, recommend bundles and are expanding into reorders and service bookings. Target has rolled out the Bullseye Gift Finder, combining conversational prompts with real-time recommendations. 

The unifying theme is the delegation of decision-making. That transactional leap is the hallmark of agentic commerce. 

Retailers slow to embrace autonomy risk being trapped as intermediaries. As PYMNTS Intelligence posited, the shift from process to prompt is already happening, and those who treat agentic AI as optional may lose the ability to shape customer journeys. After all, once consumers experience seamless transactions without clicks or confirmations, the absence of that capability feels like friction. 

The psychological shift cannot be overstated. Historically, the shopping cart symbolized consumer control: the customer chose items, reviewed and approved. Agentic AI reframes this. The cart is built, the payment applied, the loyalty credits redeemed—all before the shopper intervenes.

This doesn’t diminish autonomy; it redefines it.