Mastercard has forecast that one in ten online shoppers will routinely use AI agents to buy and pay for products by 2030.
The forecast appears in A Short History of the Future of Shopping and Payments, a report published by Mastercard. The report combines Mastercard research with the views of four futurists based in the US, Europe, and Asia, and estimates that AI-driven consumer spending could reach GBP 370 billion a year globally by the end of the decade. It argues that businesses across retail, real estate, finance, and hospitality will need to adjust how they sell products and services as AI agents take on a growing share of purchasing decisions.
Retailers to serve both human and AI shoppers
According to the report, retailers will increasingly need to design for two types of customers: people and AI agents acting on their behalf. An AI agent, the report notes, can process large volumes of data, verify claims, and assess reviews within seconds before completing a purchase. This is expected to require businesses to make product information, claims, and policies machine-readable, so an agent can locate and verify details such as sustainability certifications.
In addition, the report identifies the UK as one of the first markets expected to adopt agentic commerce at scale, alongside China, the US, and South Korea.
Trust and regulatory frameworks
The report’s contributors describe trust as central to the shift towards agentic commerce, noting that each major change in how people shop, from physical marketplaces to online checkout, has required consumers to place trust in a new mechanism. Agentic commerce extends this further, as it involves delegating not just information-gathering but the purchasing decision itself to AI.
The report anticipates that at least three G20 regulators will introduce formal guidance on registering and monitoring AI agents by 2030. It also suggests that the scope of a consumer’s authorisation for an agent to purchase on their behalf, referred to as payment intent, will become a significant factor in transactions, verifiable ahead of purchase.
Younger consumers driving early adoption
The report’s findings are supported by separate Mastercard research covering 26.000 parents and teenagers aged 13 to 18 across 13 countries, including 2.000 respondents in the UK. The research found that teenagers are using AI to support shopping decisions at roughly twice the rate of their parents. In the UK, 62% of young people said they believe AI will significantly change how their generation shops in future.
The same research found that 36% of teenagers said they were likely to use a fully AI-run shopping assistant, compared with 24% of parents, and that teenagers were twice as likely as parents to use AI weekly to find the best price or discount. Furthermore, a third of teenagers said they would trust an AI product recommendation over a friend’s, and 27% said they would trust it over their parents’ advice. Everyday purchases such as groceries and subscriptions are expected to be among the first categories delegated to AI agents.
Mastercard’s agentic commerce initiatives
Mastercard said it has already completed several live, end-to-end payments executed by an AI agent in Europe this year. Earlier in 2026, the company launched Agent Suite, which combines technical support, payments infrastructure, data insights, and a network of 4.000 global advisors to help retailers integrate agentic AI into their operations. Last month, Mastercard used the UK to launch its Proto Agentic Sandbox, a testing environment for retailers and partners to validate agentic AI use cases, including product discoverability by agents, payment scalability, and dispute handling, before moving into production.
