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No sooner has agentic commerce entered the domain of digital payments than questions have sprung up regarding issues of trust and identity. The trust issue in particular came to the fore early Monday with survey results indicating that just 19% of adult consumers in the U.K. trust that AI agents will abide by guidance in executing day-to-day purchasing. By contrast, 55% trust a human expert.
The YouGov survey, which canvassed 2,080 adults between June 19 and June 22 on behalf of the U.S. processor ACI Worldwide Inc., suggests consumers will need substantial assurances from merchants and payments companies to build trust in agentic commerce, ACI says. Agentic commerce is a form of online shopping that involves AI agents acting on behalf of human shoppers.
“The findings clearly show that consumers are open to AI helping them shop smarter, but only if they remain firmly in control of both the decision‑making and their money,” Adriana Iordan, head of merchant and payments intelligence at ACI, says in a statement. This “trust gap,” as Iordan characterizes it, will require providers to develop strong restraints on approvals and spending limits, she says. Sensitive consumer data will also require protection to win trust, she adds.
The results indicate consumers are more comfortable with AI as a “best price” finder, ACI says. Half of the respondents like that feature, but 43% trust the technology to abide by spending caps that they set. Trust plummets further over issues like acting in the consumer’s best interest (18% indicated trust), protecting payment and personal data (17%), and addressing problems when a transaction breaks down (15%).
The results overall indicate a lingering “discomfort” with agent-driven shopping, ACI says, particularly when agents are set up to buy independently or are given access to personal financial information. Some 70% said any transaction made by an agent without permission from the consumer would dampen the consumer’s willingness to keep using the technology.
The trust issues arise as merchants and payments companies are adapting to an online, near-term future that involves commerce conducted by a mix of humans and AI agents. Companies are already facing the risk of fraud in this form of commerce. In the latest instance, a company called Notarize Inc. which does business as Proof, last week launched technology called x401, which allows Web sites and APIs to ask for and verify who is behind the agents.
But losses to fraud aren’t the only risk advocates of agentic commerce must overcome, ACI says. “If the industry wants adoption, it must prioritize control over capability: explicit approvals, hard spending limits, protected payment details, and clear accountability when things go wrong,” says Iordan, in a statement.
Consumers, she adds, are “telling us very clearly that they won’t hand control of their finances to an autonomous agent without safeguards. This isn’t a capability gap. It’s a trust and confidence gap.”
