Agentic commerce and control: Getting the balance right

As buying becomes delegated to AI, retailers face a higher risk of disintermediation, greater operational exposure, and more pressure to avoid early lock-in to closed ecosystems. Flexibility matters because standards, regulations, and consumer expectations will change.

An agentic commerce protocol is a set of technical and operational rules that define how AI agents are authorised to act on a shopper’s behalf, how payments are executed, and how intent, consent, data, and liability are handled in delegated transactions. The priority is not choosing a single protocol early, but making sure  your payments and risk infrastructure can support multiple protocols over time.

It’s too early to rebuild your stack around autonomous buying,  but it’s not too early to prepare. Discovery is moving faster than checkout. Focus on foundations: flexible integrations, auditability, tokenisation, and risk controls that can support agent-initiated journeys when they scale.

Own intent and payment data. When retailers define the mandate an agent can act under and retain control of tokenisation, they preserve recognition, loyalty, post-purchase service, and accountability—even as interfaces change.