COMMENTARY: What Credit Cards Taught Us About Winning Trust in Agentic Shopping

It’s hard to imagine today, but there was a time when typing a credit card number into a Web site felt risky. In the 1990s, most consumers preferred driving to a store to shopping online. E-commerce user interfaces were clunky, the connection was slow, and the security of card information was uncertain. Today, we shop online without a second thought dozens of times a month with just a tap on our phones.

Not only did online transactions become faster and more seamless, but merchants, banks, and payment providers built the infrastructure of trust, including fraud protection, encryption, and buyer guarantees, until security stopped being a primary concern for shoppers.

We are in the early stages of that same adoption arc with agentic AI shopping. New research Commerce published with Logica Research, in partnership with PayPal, puts real numbers behind consumer behavior and adoption.

According to the research, two-thirds of some 1,000 U.S. online shoppers already use AI tools in some part of their lives, and 28% are using them specifically while shopping, mostly for products that require more product research: clothing, health and wellness, and bigger-ticket purchases like electronics or cars. Consumers are not asking AI to buy for them yet, but they are asking AI to help with their pre-purchase homework. Consumers are using AI to research a product (49%), find the best price (47%), and compare options (34%). Half of respondents say using AI for product discovery saves them time.

Interest in going further is high. Sixty-seven percent of consumers in the survey are interested in trying a true agentic-shopping tool, one that can act on their behalf rather than just answer questions. Four in five hope agentic shopping tools will save them both time and money. But it is also interesting to look at where they want that help to stop: research and comparison, not checkout. Only 5% want an agent to complete a purchase without a confirmation step. Meanwhile, 38% say they don’t want an agent making purchases on their behalf at all, full stop.

That is not a rejection of the technology. It’s the same instinct that made someone in 1998 comfortable browsing products on a Web site but not entering their card number. People delegate the parts of a task that feel like labor before they delegate the parts that feel like risk.

The concerns are specific, not vague technophobia: 41% worry about unauthorized purchases, 38% about bank-account security, and 32% about data privacy. Some 82% expect an agentic-shopping tool to offer payment security equal to or better than what they already have. That’s the bar. Not “good enough for a beta.” Equal or better.

There’s also a transparency test merchants should note: 55% say it’s essential that sponsored content be clearly labeled, and 49% don’t want retailers to be able to pay for preferential placement inside an agent’s recommendations. Shoppers will let AI narrow their choices, but they won’t accept those results to be secretly monetized against them.

So here are some industry rules for agentic shopping. First, meet shoppers where they already are: the product-discovery phase. That’s where trust gets built or lost first, well before checkout is even on the table.

Second, build the confirmation and control into agentic checkout now, not later. Clear cancellation policies without penalty, visible fraud protection, and purchase confirmation are critical.  Thirty-one percent of respondents said purchase confirmation would increase their likelihood of trying an agentic tool at all.

Third, plan for a multi-retailer world. Shoppers want agents that work across their favorite brands, not tools that lock them into a single brand. Sixty-six percent say working with favorite retailers matters, but 65% also want the ability to compare across multiple brands in the same session.

Credit cards proved that consumers will move fast once the guardrails are visible and real. The difference this time is the speed at which the industry is moving. Merchants and payment providers are setting up confirmation flows, fraud protection, and transparency standards for agentic commerce right now, in real time, alongside consumer adoption. Merchants who prioritize these guardrails will be early winners in the agentic-commerce evolution.

—Michaela Weber is senior vice president of product management for payments at Commerce.