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Adyen Agentic: The universal translator for the next era of commerce
Why an open ecosystem is critical for agentic commerce to scale.
At Adyen, we made a deliberate choice to approach agentic commerce at the infrastructure level. We spoke with hundreds of customers to understand their challenges and build the right foundations to address them.
What became clear is this: merchants need a partner they can trust to protect their brand, their customers, and their data as they adapt to a new landscape. AI platforms, in turn, need a partner that can abstract away integration complexity and connect them to merchants at scale.
There needs to be a universal translator: one that lets merchants integrate once and participate everywhere, while remaining fully in control. That is the role Adyen Agentic plays.
Historically, every new channel, from desktop to mobile, marketplaces to social commerce, has demanded its own custom integration. If the industry repeats that fragmented playbook in this era, merchants will spend the next decade rebuilding their infrastructure every time a new protocol scales. For this new model to work — now and over the long term — the future of commerce must be open.
Adyen Agentic: an open future for commerce
Many early AI commerce initiatives look like closed gardens. Adyen Agentic takes a different approach. Our suite of modular APIs acts as a universal translator, enabling merchants to connect once and participate across evolving agent platforms, protocols, and payment methods. For us openness isn't just a principle; it's the foundation.
Adyen Agentic operates across three critical layers of the customer journey:
Agentic Feed: Structures and distributes real-time catalog, pricing, and availability data into conversational commerce environments, ensuring AI agents always have accurate stock information.
Agentic Cart: Seamlessly hooks an AI agent's request back into existing checkout, tax, fulfillment, and order management systems.
Agentic Payments: Handles token portability, authentication, risk management, and merchant-of-record preservation specifically optimized for agent-led transactions.
Through active participation in the industry standards shaping agentic commerce, Adyen ensures its partners and merchants remain compatible with the protocols defining the future. Supported by strategic ecosystem leaders, this infrastructure is built to scale securely from day one.
Preparing for what comes next
No one can predict with absolute certainty which conversational platforms or protocols will dominate five years from now. But enterprise retailers shouldn't have to bet their engineering roadmaps on a guess.
By implementing an open, modular translator layer today, the retail industry can safely step into the future of autonomous commerce and capture new AI-driven demand while keeping core operations entirely secure.
Learn more about the product suite here.