When AI Shops, Who Holds the Cart?

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Imagine a robot that can pick your groceries, compare prices, and even pay—yet you still decide the final price. That’s the new frontier of commerce.

TL;DR
• Merchants are cautious about giving AI full control, especially over pricing and liability.
• Consumers allow AI to search and compare but rarely give payment access.
• The future of agentic commerce hinges on smart boundaries between autonomy and human oversight.

Summary
The report highlights a growing tension between merchants and autonomous AI agents in commerce, emphasizing that the core decision is whether firms should cede control of pricing, payment, and customer routing to algorithms. Survey data from the Global Digital Shopping Index shows that 46% of merchants protect pricing, 42% guard fraud and dispute handling, and 41% block agents from steering shoppers to rival sites, reflecting a strategic split between economic benefit and risk exposure.
• Prioritize transparent data pipelines so merchants can identify AI‑driven traffic and link it to sales outcomes.
• Implement clear consent and task‑specific limits for agents accessing payment credentials, mirroring the 35% consumer comfort level.
• Develop redress processes for disputes arising from autonomous checkout or multi‑merchant bundling, addressing the 42% merchant concern about liability.
• Require structured product data standards to enable agents to operate within defined parameters, reducing the 85% gap in merchant‑readable information.
• Establish oversight committees that include ethicists and diverse stakeholder input to decide when full autonomy is economically justified.

Merchants are channeling investment toward AI use cases that enhance customer value without relinquishing core control, such as personalized offers, loyalty programs, and automated search, with 31% planning near‑term spend and 62% within two years. In contrast, only 26% intend to fund autonomous checkout, and nearly half label multi‑merchant bundling, autonomous checkout, and dispute management as “later or never,” underscoring a cautious approach to transaction‑level automation. Consumers echo this selective trust, allowing agents to search and compare products (56%) but restricting access to saved payment details (35%).

The emerging model treats AI as a conditional negotiating layer rather than a blanket conversion tool, requiring firms to define precise boundaries for agent autonomy, maintain transparency in algorithmic decision paths, and provide mechanisms for users to contest outcomes. By aligning investment with tasks that preserve merchant oversight and by embedding ethical safeguards, businesses can capture AI‑driven efficiencies while mitigating risk and preserving consumer confidence.

As AI takes the wheel, who will steer the conversation about responsibility and value?