Building a merchant-first foundation for agentic commerce

AI in commerce isn’t the first major shift in how consumers interact with merchants. Think back to the leap from desktop e-commerce to mobile. At first, many feared disintermediation: Would the app store replace our website? Would our brand disappear behind another platform?

The answer, of course, was no. Mobile didn’t replace digital storefronts; it added a powerful, specialized channel for high-intent customers. It was an addition, not a replacement.

Agentic commerce may follow a similar path: an additive channel that unlocks instant, frictionless experiences. Yet it also redefines who drives the interaction, as AI agents begin to act directly on a consumer’s behalf.

For many merchants, that opportunity comes with a genuine fear: disintermediation. If the entire customer journey is contained within the chat interface of a large AI platform, the concern is that a merchant's hard-won brand could be reduced to a commodity, perhaps a featureless API endpoint in a bot’s decision-making logic.

This tension cuts across every key dimension of a merchant’s business:

• The direct customer relationship: the visibility required to truly understand, personalize for, and foster lasting loyalty with the shopper.

• Payment and risk control: the oversight and flexibility to manage fraud, optimize payment routing, and control processing costs.

• Strategic payment flexibility: the freedom to switch Payment Service Providers (PSPs), leverage existing tokens for one-click checkouts, or maintain seamless subscription models without platform interference.

The agent’s greatest strength for the consumer, simplifying choice, can feel like the merchant’s greatest threat: becoming interchangeable.

A sustainable model for agentic commerce is one where personalization, loyalty, and differentiation continue to thrive, simply through a new medium. To get there, merchants must strategically define what they expose to the agentic environment and how — turning the channel into a source of qualified customer acquisition, not commoditized sales.

At Adyen, we believe the AI revolution must work for merchants, not against them. That conviction anchors our entire approach.

For agentic commerce to become a sustainable and profitable channel, it must be built on three fundamentals: trust, transparency, and merchant autonomy. 

Our principles aren’t abstract values; they are architectural safeguards — technical and procedural commitments designed to protect the integrity of merchant-agent interactions. Together, they ensure that the essential building blocks of agentic payments: control, security, and ownership, remain firmly in the merchant’s hands.

1. AI agents may only act on behalf of shoppers after receiving an explicit, verifiable authorization (a mandate) that secures the transaction and proves intent.

This is the bedrock of consumer trust and verifiable intent. It ensures the agent’s role is strictly to execute on the shopper’s defined mandate, preventing the agent from becoming a "rogue buyer." By demanding a verifiable mandate, an auditable, signed proof of approval for each transaction, we create a clear line of responsibility. This is essential for:

1. Reduced risk: It is the essential protection against buyer’s remorse claims and a vital input for fraud and risk management.

2. Compliance: It directly addresses the complexities of regulatory frameworks like SCA (Strong Customer Authentication) by requiring explicit consent, even in agent-led flows.

3. Trust at scale: It builds confidence for consumers, merchants, and regulators alike.

Building on our deep experience in authentication and tokenization, we are extending these safeguards directly into agent-led payment flows.

2. Merchants must be able to support all payment methods and manage their own tokenization lifecycle, allowing one-click checkout, card-on-file, and subscription models.

In agentic commerce, merchants must be free to support all payment methods (cards, wallets, and alternative tenders) while also managing their own tokenization lifecycle for one-click checkout, card-on-file, and subscription models.

This is the principle of anti-disintermediation in practice. In the age of the agent, it is paramount that the payment ecosystem remains payment-method- and PSP-agnostic.

Our commitment ensures that an AI-assisted transaction is simply another channel routed through a merchant’s checkout. Merchants maintain full strategic control over their payment stack, the methods they support, and the tokens representing their customers.

3. Merchants must be able to recognize and serve customers securely across agentic channels through a universal payment token

As shopping moves into chat and agent interfaces, traditional recognition tools, like logins or cookies, lose effectiveness as the AI agent mediates the relationship. The solution is a persistent, universal identifier:  the payment token. A token securely replaces raw card data and becomes a stable identity for the shopper. 

Built on Adyen’s Tokenization, Authentication, and Checkout APIs, this enables merchants to:

• Recognize and reward: apply loyalty benefits automatically and maintain a cohesive, cross-channel customer history and relationship.

• Preserve revenue continuity: keep subscriptions and stored credentials intact even when an agent executes the payment.

• Simplify compliance: reduce sensitive data storage while enhancing traceability and security.

The Universal Token anchors identity and trust in agentic environments, allowing merchants to recognize their customers, even when the interface changes.

4. Merchants must own their transaction data and customer relationships, ensuring that post-purchase visibility and service remain in their control.

This is the principle of data ownership and customer service. The AI may facilitate discovery and purchase, but fulfillment and post-purchase interactions are where the customer experience and long-term loyalty are built. These are moments where merchants must remain in control.

The ability to manage shipping, handle returns, process refunds, and troubleshoot issues depends entirely on owning the complete transaction record. Our principles mandate that core purchase details must flow directly to, and remain with, the merchant, ensuring a merchant's customer support team, not a third-party chat interface, owns the relationship after the sale.

The rise of agentic commerce is not a zero-sum game. It builds on technologies already evolving across the ecosystem. Like every major shift in commerce, from the introduction of mobile payments to unified commerce, this new phase is complex, but it’s one we are navigating with our merchants and partners.

Our role is to build the payments infrastructure that turns the risk of disintermediation into an opportunity for higher-value, merchant-controlled commerce. We’re collaborating with ecosystem leaders such as Google, OpenAI, Visa, and Mastercard, and with our global merchants, to define open standards and protocols rooted in merchant control and shopper trust.

In agentic commerce, control risks shifting to the AI layer. The key is to ensure that merchants remain in command of the payment flow, the data, and the customer relationship, even when the interaction is delegated to an agent. 

We’re building for that future: one where AI extends reach and convenience, but never at the expense of merchant autonomy. Our platform is grounded in secure delegation, cryptographic proof, and interoperable infrastructure that preserve the same level of control merchants have today, across every channel and every agent.

Throughout, our principles remain constant: invest in durable, interoperable infrastructure that creates lasting value for merchants and their customers, and adopt innovations quickly once they prove their worth.