Deann Evans is Managing Director, EMEA at Shopify, a leading tech company that provides the essential internet infrastructure for commerce.
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The linear purchase journey is no more. Traditionally, shoppers might discover a product on social media, go to the site and follow the purchase through to checkout or go and pick it up in-store. It was lots of linear channels, all of which involved a real customer trying to buy a product. Now they simply need to ask in an AI conversation, and an agent can handle the entire process. It means brands cannot assume there’s a human in the loop anymore.
This new way to buy is being driven by agentic commerce, where AI agents discover and even buy on the shopper’s behalf. It’s revolutionizing every facet of the shopping experience, and it has the potential to create up to $5 trillion in global revenue by 2030, according to McKinsey. However, while product discovery is already working, now is the time to lay the foundations for AI-based transactions to go mainstream.
Discovery is getting easy, but transactions need to be, too.
For AI agents to recommend products to customers is relatively simple; it crawls pages to find answers based on the prompt. But ensuring the data and infrastructure surrounding the product are accurate enough to drive a transaction is much more difficult. Product data, up-to-date pricing, inventory levels, discounts and even loyalty programs all need to be in place and correct to serve the right options.
The next phase of commerce, therefore, needs to be built on an infrastructure that supports agents as if they were the customer. Product data needs to be structured in such a way that agents can easily understand it, while checkout rules need to be easily applicable within the conversation. These infrastructure foundations need to be incorporated everywhere buyers spend time, from search to chat, apps and even in-store to ensure a seamless and consistent experience.
Set the standards to seize the opportunity.
As AI becomes central to commerce, merchants need to make sure they’re visible. However, building separate integrations for each platform or chatbot simply isn’t feasible. The infrastructure behind commerce therefore needs to be in place so merchants only have to think about what they sell, not where.
Open standards will play an important role in making that possible. Commerce has always depended on shared ways of exchanging information between companies, regardless of the technology involved. Agentic commerce is no different. AI agents need a consistent way to discover products, understand pricing and inventory, and complete transactions across merchants and platforms. The Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), developed by Shopify and Google, is an early example of that effort, providing a common framework for AI agents to discover, communicate with and transact with merchants across categories.
Much like the universal barcode gave every retailer, manufacturer and distributor a common way to identify products regardless of who made or sold them, agentic commerce will depend on shared ways for AI systems to understand products and complete transactions across the entire ecosystem.
Standards like this are only the start. There also needs to be more collaboration so merchants can focus on building their businesses and contributing to the global economy, rather than trying to manually get the tech working. I’m not just talking about serving customers in one market either. Everywhere shoppers can buy needs to be open to merchants, anywhere in the world.
Commerce needs to be managed everywhere.
With more shopping journeys becoming AI-led, merchants may feel that they’re giving up control to the LLMs to reach more customers. That is a misnomer that needs to be addressed. Transactions via agents should be treated as another channel through which to sell. They are not the merchant of record.
Having control over the selling process is critical, and merchants need to have the capabilities in place so they can decide how and where they show up. Their brand still needs to be recognized, even within an AI chat. As agentic commerce grows, if merchants don’t have the right controls and insights in place to inform their strategic decisions, they risk getting left behind.
Lay the foundations to make agentic commerce work everywhere.
Data readiness is important, but it should only be part of merchants’ overall AI strategy. According to KPMG, in 2024, only 29% of retail organizations expected to scale how they used AI. In 2026, that’s grown to 74%. However, uptake does not equal maturity.
AI transformation cannot be an add-on to commerce. It needs to be embedded throughout all aspects of the business at every level for agentic commerce to be successful. For example, alongside having the product data easily visible, merchants could use it to help them improve descriptions or even test out new marketing campaigns in safe environments.
The companies that are successful won’t necessarily have the biggest budgets to spend on AI tools. Instead, they’ll be the ones whose leaders are prepared to change how their company operates. One of the best ways to do this is to begin any implementation with specific use cases that have clear success metrics, such as time savings on report generation or updates to products.
None of this preparation is for a distant future. Agentic commerce is already beginning to influence how consumers discover and purchase products. AI-driven traffic to Shopify stores alone has grown eight times year-on-year, and orders from AI-powered searches have increased nearly 13 times. These shoppers are also proving to be higher-value customers. They’re converting at nearly 50% higher rates, and average order values are 14% higher according to our data.
Merchants now need the strategies in place that mean they can sell everything, everywhere, all at once. Every product data point will need to be clear and relevant for agents to understand. Every customer journey will need to be easy to navigate. This is not navel-gazing into the future. Getting agentic commerce right means more merchants, regardless of size, have the foundations they need to show up everywhere their buyers are shopping.
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