The road to agentic commerce – the journey so far

Diana Vorniceanu, Senior Editor at The Paypers, offers an overview of some of the most notable developments surrounding the concept of agentic commerce.

Agentic commerce: a timeline

Agentic commerce is dominating most discussions about the future of payments by a landslide. Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, Google, OpenAI, PayPal, several fintechs, and some larger retailers have announced partnerships, launches, and protocols that promise to change how customers shop. The push from the industry is signalling that the payments industry is entering a new era, one in which AI agents transact autonomously on behalf of consumers.

Despite the marketing hype and the billions being invested, the technology is still nascent. As Forrester noted in an article from late 2025, agentic payments do not yet exist, as they require to be initiated and executed autonomously by agents with no explicit intervention from humans, something that, at this point in time, remains a goal more than a reality. For now, the concept of ‘agentic payments is mostly used to describe purchase processes that involve AI agents – where agents act more like assistants helping customers offload the cognitive effort of searching and filtering through products, rather than autonomously making purchase decisions or completing transactions themselves.

However, starting in 2025, the building blocks for this to happen started being laid. Before agentic payments become a matured concept, authentication and liability frameworks still need to be worked out. What also remains to be seen is how customers and merchants will adapt to this new scenario. Let’s take a look at some of the major developments surrounding the concept of agentic commerce.

2024: the starting blocks for agentic commerce

On 14 November 2024, Stripe launched an agent toolkit, a software developing kit which enables AI agents to issue and use virtual cards via Stripe Issuing.

Four days later, on 18 November, Perplexity announced Buy With Pro, a feature that gave its US-based paying customers access to an AI-shopping assistant that could research products from select merchants on behalf of the user and enabled a one-click checkout. The announcement included an invitation for merchants to participate free of charge by launching the Perplexity Merchant Programme, making it possible for large retailers to share their product specs.

On 24 November, Anthropic launched the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open-source standard for connecting AI systems to data sources, thus laying the technological foundation of many of the later developments in the agentic commerce space. 

2025: building momentum

On 3 April 2025, Amazon launched 'Buy for Me' for a subset of US customers, enabling customers to purchase products from third-party websites – if Amazon didn’t sell the item directly – without leaving Amazon, with customers completing the purchase in the app while the AI agent navigates the external retailer’s checkout on the user’s behalf.

On 14 April, PayPal launched Agent Toolkit, built on its MCP servers, which enabled users to integrate PayPal's commerce functionalities into AI agent workflows, thus making it possible for agents to perform tasks like creating and managing orders, generating and sending invoices, as well as handling subscription lifecycles.

On 29 April, Mastercard launched Agent Pay by building on the card network’s tokenization capabilities. At the core of the network’s Agent Pay are Agentic Tokens or dynamic digital credentials that enable AI agents to transact while being uniquely tied to individual users. The Mastercard Agent Pay Acceptance Framework requires AI agents to be registered and verified before they are granted permission to transact on the Mastercard network. Its launch partners included PSPs like Braintree and Checkout.com, as well as tech enablers Microsoft and IBM.

One day after, on 30 April, Visa announced its Intelligent Commerce offering. The suite covered several core capabilities, including AI-ready tokenized digital credentials, authentication, payment instructions, commerce signals, and personalisation. The feature works in nine steps, from agent onboarding to the agent making the payment on behalf of the customer.

On 14 May, Perplexity partnered with PayPal to support agentic commerce in the US by allowing consumers to checkout with PayPal or Venmo when they asked Perplexity to find products, book travel, or buy tickets.

A few months later, on 4 August, the first accusations and signs of tensions became visible when Cloudflare published a research accusing Perplexity of using stealth, undeclared crawlers to evade website no-crawl directives. Later, in October 2025, Amazon will issue Perplexity a cease and desist letter due to similar accusations.

On 4 September, Visa introduced its MCP server for Visa Intelligence Commerce and started piloting the Visa Acceptance Agent Toolkit.

After a few days, on 10 September, Mastercard launched its Agent Toolkit, enabling AI assistants and agentic tools to access and interpret Mastercard’s API via MCP. Mastercard also announced the launch of Agent Sign-Up (a way for those using Agent Toolkit to identify their agents and access  AI-enabled Mastercard products and services), Insight Tokens (a way for agents to access and apply permissioned insights from Mastercard), and Agentic Consulting Services (support for issuers, acquirers, merchants, and AI enablers to design intelligent shopping experiences).

On 16 September, Google launched the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), an open protocol to initiate and transact agent-led payments across platforms. AP2 was created in collaboration with over 60 companies including Adyen, American Express, Ant International, Coinbase, Etsy, Forter, Intuit, JCB, Mastercard, Mysten Labs, Paypal, Revolut, Salesforce, ServiceNow, UnionPay International, Worldpay, and more.

Later that month, on 29 September, OpenAI and Stripe launched Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), a new, merchant-focused open standard as well as Instant Checkout, a way for US customers to purchase select items from Etsy merchants without leaving the ChatGPT chat, with Stripe tokenizing the payment data. Shopify merchants were named as following suite.

That same day, PayOS, an agentic payments and value-added services platform company, announced that it successfully completed the first live agentic token transaction using Mastercard Agentic Token.

On 14 October, in collaboration with Cloudflare, Visa launches the Trusted Agent Protocol, essentially enabling approved agents to securely pass critical information to merchants. As per the official release, the protocol was developed with insights from early partners like Adyen, Ant International, Checkout.com, Coinbase, CyberSource, Elavon, Fiserv, Microsoft, Nuvei, Shopify, Stripe, and Worldpay.

On the same day, Walmart partnered with OpenAI to develop AI-enabled shopping experiences, thus making it possible for customers and members to make purchases from the merchant directly within ChatGPT, signalling the start of large retailers exploring agentic commerce.

On 27 October, Mastercard and PayPal announced a partnership that made it possible for Mastercard’s Agent Pay to be integrated into PayPal’s wallet, thus allowing AI agents to complete transactions on behalf of PayPal users. Additionally, as part of the partnership, PayPal announced that it will pilot the Mastercard Agent Pay Acceptance Framework and partner to co-develop and test with agents and merchants in the market.

One day later, on 28 October, OpenAI and PayPal partnered to bring payment processing and shopping directly into ChatGPT, allowing users to discover products and check out instantly using PayPal services. As per the announcement, starting in 2026, PayPal will connect its global merchant network to ChatGPT through the Agentic Commerce Protocol, making it easier for people to go from browsing to buying without leaving the chat interface.

On the same day, in partnership with Wix, Cymbio, Commerce, and Shopware, PayPal announced its plans to launch agentic commerce services. According to the official release, these services would initially offer an agentic payment solution along with catalogue and order management tools that help merchants connect their product data, inventory, and fulfilment systems with AI-powered discovery and checkout experiences.

On 31 October, Amazon sent Perplexity a cease-and-desist letter demanding that Perplexity immediately stop using its Comet AI agents to access Amazon's ecommerce websites, alleging the company was violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act by disguising Comet as a Google Chrome browser.

On 4 November, Perplexity responded to Amazon’s letter, calling its legal threat ‘bullying’ and an attempt to block innovation. The statement argued that its users have the right to use its AI assistant to shop on Amazon and that Perplexity would not be intimidated. The same day, Amazon published a statement doubling down on its request that Perplexity remove Amazon from the Comet experience.

On 19 November, Target announced plans to launch an app withing ChatGPT that would enable its users to discover and shop Target items right inside ChatGPT.

On the same day, Perplexity announced a partnership with PayPal to launch a free agentic shopping product for US users, a feature that was previously only available to paying members.

A day later, on 20 November, EMVCo announced that it started working on how global specifications like EMV 3-D Secure (3DS), EMV Payment Tokenisation, and EMV Secure Remote Commerce (SRC) can support agentic payments.

On 3 December, Mastercard announced that it will launch Agent Pay in Latin America and the Caribbean starting in 2026, with partners like Bemobi, Checkout.com, Davivienda, Evertec, Getnet, Inti, MagaluPay, and Yuno among the first to adopt the solution.

On 12 December, Klarna launched its Agentic Product Protocol that provided AI agents with access to a continuously updated feed covering over 100 million products and approximately 400 million price points across 12 markets.

A few days later, on 18 December, Visa announced that it completed ‘hundreds of secure, agent-initiated transactions’ through controlled pilots.

2026: settling into pace

On 6 January 2026, Amazon faced backlash from third-party retailers for listing their products in its ‘Buy for Me’ capability without their permission. The merchants affected argued that they did not opt in for their products to be featured and claimed that Amazon's listings contained inaccurate information, including listings of products that said retailers didn’t sell or that were out of stock.

On 11 January, Google launched the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), a new agentic commerce protocol developed in partnership with Ant International, Shopify, and major retailers. The protocol powers a new checkout feature in Google's AI Mode and Gemini app, initially supporting Google Pay, with PayPal integration coming later.

A day later, on 12 January, FIS announced a partnership with Mastercard and Visa to enable banks to participate in AI-mediated commerce at scale. The solution, expected to be available at the end of Q1 2026, aims to help banks recognise when an AI agent is making a purchase, approve legitimate transactions, and protect customers from fraud.

On 21 January, reports came out claiming that Shopify merchants will have to pay a 4% fee on ChatGPT Checkout sales, which were later confirmed by OpenAI. This is the first example of AI answer engines monetising transactions facilitated by their services, which was expected, though discussions arose around merchants paying double fees since Shopify Payments, which already charges transaction fees, is required for native checkout in ChatGPT.

On 27 January, Mastercard launched Agent Suite, offering technical support and configurable AI agents that companies can develop, test, and deploy for specific use cases.

The road ahead for agentic commerce

While big retailers have made the jump to agentic commerce, for medium-sized and smaller merchants, concerns about disintermediation rise high, with many fearing that with AI agents handling discovery and purchasing, they risk losing the direct customer relationship.

2026 will be defined by further infrastructure work and the consolidation of the developments made so far, but the road to true agentic commerce will take time. As the building blocks are being consolidated, the industry still has to address questions surrounding liability, regulatory oversight, and the rise of new fraud threats.

About the author

Diana Vorniceanu (Lupuleac) is a Senior Editor at The Paypers. She has an extensive background in content creation and is a graduate of Foreign Languages and Literature studies, currently specialising in payments and ecommerce. She strives to bring forward the latest trends for our readers, while investigating the ever-evolving landscape of cross-border payments, global ecommerce, payments for marketplaces and online platforms, and emerging technologies across the globe. You can reach Diana via email at diana@thepaypers.com or on LinkedIn.