{ "title": "The State of Agentic Commerce", "edition": 1, "asOf": "2026-06-11", "canonical": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce", "definition": "Agentic commerce is the emerging practice of AI agents discovering, comparing, and purchasing products and services on a person's behalf. As of June 2026 the field is consolidating around shared protocols and payment rails, but autonomous checkout remains early and most measurable value comes from AI-driven discovery.", "summary": "A dated evidence ledger for agentic commerce, not a vendor directory. As of June 2026, AI shopping surfaces have shipped across the US, China, Korea, Japan, and Latin America; payment networks, processors, stablecoin issuers, and identity standards bodies are still competing on how agents should be authorized and verified. Capital has followed the stack, but autonomous checkout remains early: independent analysis still finds supervised discovery and referral traffic ahead of unattended purchasing.", "keyTakeaways": [ "The stack is fragmenting by function: MCP for tools, ACP and UCP for commerce, AP2 and x402 for payments, and A2UI/AG-UI for interfaces — with no single standard yet dominant.", "The AI-shopping platform race is now global, spanning the US, China (Alibaba-Qwen, ByteDance-Doubao, Tencent-Weixin, Baidu, JD), Korea (Naver, Kakao), and Latin America (Mercado Libre), with platforms diverging on who owns checkout — OpenAI and Microsoft route purchases back to merchants while Amazon, Walmart, and Alibaba complete them directly.", "A distinct agent-identity and trust layer has formed: DNS-AID (Linux Foundation), GoDaddy ANS, Cloudflare signed agents and Web Bot Auth, AWS Bedrock AgentCore, W3C and OpenID community groups, NIST CAISI, and EMVCo, while vendor-origin standards move to neutral homes (the Agentic AI Foundation, the x402 Foundation, the FIDO Alliance).", "Card networks, processors, and stablecoin issuers are shipping competing ways to authorize agent payments — cryptographic mandates, merchant-scoped tokens, virtual cards, and onchain stablecoin rails — rather than one method.", "Capital and consolidation followed: roughly sixteen agentic-commerce financings (from Ralio’s ~$2.5M pre-seed to Phia’s $35M consumer-agent round and Sierra’s $950M) plus M&A including PayPal/Cymbio, Adyen/Talon.One (€750M), Capital One/Brex ($5.15B), and Accenture/DaVinci.", "The legal limit of agent access is unresolved: a US court enjoined Perplexity's Comet agent from logged-in Amazon pages, the Ninth Circuit stayed it pending appeal, and oral argument was heard on 2026-06-11 with no decision yet; independent analysis still finds autonomous purchasing rare, with most measurable value from AI-driven discovery and referral traffic." ], "license": "CC-BY-4.0", "maintainer": "Poneva (Skai Technology Sweden AB)", "sections": [ { "id": "protocols", "title": "Protocols & standards", "intro": "The protocol layer that lets agents read catalogs, render interfaces, delegate tasks, and complete purchases. Multiple competing standards are live at once; interoperability between them is largely unresolved.", "entries": [ { "id": "mcp", "subject": "MCP (Model Context Protocol)", "tag": "Tool integration", "fact": "Current published spec version is 2025-11-25 (JSON-RPC 2.0, with Resources, Prompts, and Tools). Governed via Working Groups and Spec Enhancement Proposals, hosted as a Linux Foundation project alongside A2A.", "asOf": "2026-04-09", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Specification (2025-11-25)", "publisher": "Model Context Protocol", "url": "https://modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/2025-11-25", "date": "2025-11-25" }, { "title": "A2A Protocol Surpasses 150 Organizations", "publisher": "Linux Foundation", "url": "https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/a2a-protocol-surpasses-150-organizations-lands-in-major-cloud-platforms-and-sees-enterprise-production-use-in-first-year", "date": "2026-04-09" } ], "significance": "It is the base layer through which agents read catalogs and invoke merchant tools, so commerce protocols and app platforms that build on it inherit its capabilities and governance.", "trend": "consolidating", "related": [ "mcp-rc", "mcp-apps", "openai-apps-sdk", "acp", "a2a", "coinbase-base-mcp", "mcp-servers", "shopify" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-mcp" }, { "id": "mcp-rc", "subject": "MCP — 2026-07-28 release candidate", "tag": "Spec (forthcoming)", "fact": "The next MCP spec (2026-07-28) was locked as a release candidate on 2026-05-21, opening a validation window before final publication. It makes the protocol core stateless, moves Tasks to an extension, incorporates MCP Apps, hardens authorization toward OAuth 2.0 / OpenID Connect, and adds a formal deprecation policy; it contains breaking changes versus 2025-11-25.", "asOf": "2026-05-27", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "The 2026-07-28 MCP Specification Release Candidate", "publisher": "Model Context Protocol Blog", "url": "https://blog.modelcontextprotocol.io/posts/2026-07-28-release-candidate/", "date": "2026-05-21" }, { "title": "MCP Is Growing Up", "publisher": "Agentic AI Foundation", "url": "https://aaif.io/blog/mcp-is-growing-up/", "date": "2026-05-27" } ], "context": "A release candidate, not yet the final published spec; distinct from the current 2025-11-25 spec.", "significance": "Because it introduces breaking changes and a stateless core to the protocol underpinning many agent and commerce integrations, the transition window determines when implementers must re-engineer against the new baseline.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "As a release candidate in a validation window, the final published spec and the exact migration burden of its breaking changes are not yet settled.", "related": [ "mcp", "mcp-apps" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-mcp-rc" }, { "id": "mcp-apps", "subject": "MCP Apps", "tag": "Agent UI packaging", "fact": "Official MCP extension (SEP-1865, spec 2026-01-26) for interactive UIs rendered in sandboxed iframes via the ui:// scheme. Developed by Anthropic, OpenAI, and the MCP-UI community; client support includes Claude, ChatGPT, Goose, and VS Code Insiders.", "asOf": "2026-01-26", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "MCP Apps — bringing UI capabilities to MCP clients", "publisher": "Model Context Protocol Blog", "url": "https://blog.modelcontextprotocol.io/posts/2026-01-26-mcp-apps/", "date": "2026-01-26" }, { "title": "ext-apps specification (2026-01-26)", "publisher": "GitHub / modelcontextprotocol", "url": "https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/ext-apps/blob/main/specification/2026-01-26/apps.mdx", "date": "2026-01-26" } ], "significance": "It standardizes how an agent renders interactive merchant interfaces inside the client, determining whether product browsing and checkout UIs are portable across MCP hosts rather than client-specific.", "trend": "emerging", "contested": "Its relationship to competing interface standards such as A2UI and AG-UI, and which becomes the default for agent commerce UIs, is unresolved.", "related": [ "mcp", "mcp-rc", "openai-apps-sdk", "a2ui", "ag-ui" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-mcp-apps" }, { "id": "openai-apps-sdk", "subject": "OpenAI Apps SDK", "tag": "App platform", "fact": "Built on MCP. Entered preview for Business/Enterprise/Edu on 2025-11-13; third-party app submissions opened 2025-12-17 alongside an App Directory, with apps available to logged-in ChatGPT users outside the EEA, Switzerland, and the UK.", "asOf": "2025-12-17", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Introducing apps in ChatGPT and the new Apps SDK", "publisher": "OpenAI", "url": "https://openai.com/index/introducing-apps-in-chatgpt/", "date": "2025-10-06" }, { "title": "Developers can now submit apps to ChatGPT", "publisher": "OpenAI", "url": "https://openai.com/index/developers-can-now-submit-apps-to-chatgpt/", "date": "2025-12-17" } ], "significance": "It governs how third-party commerce experiences reach ChatGPT's user base, so its directory and submission rules shape which merchants are discoverable inside one of the largest consumer agent surfaces.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "Regional exclusions (EEA, Switzerland, UK) leave open where and on what terms third-party commerce apps will be available.", "related": [ "mcp", "mcp-apps", "acp" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-openai-apps-sdk" }, { "id": "acp", "subject": "ACP (Agentic Commerce Protocol)", "tag": "Commerce / checkout", "fact": "Apache-2.0 commerce protocol created by Stripe, OpenAI, and Meta, with OpenAI and Stripe listed as Founding Maintainers in the repository; latest version 2026-04-17 added cart, feed, orders, authentication, and MCP support. Remains in beta.", "asOf": "2026-04-17", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Agentic Commerce Protocol — README", "publisher": "GitHub / agentic-commerce-protocol", "url": "https://github.com/agentic-commerce-protocol/agentic-commerce-protocol/blob/main/README.md", "date": "2026-04-17" }, { "title": "Agentic Commerce Protocol", "publisher": "Stripe Documentation", "url": "https://docs.stripe.com/agentic-commerce/acp", "date": "2026-04-17" } ], "context": "Stripe documentation names Stripe, OpenAI, and Meta as creators; the spec repository lists OpenAI and Stripe as Founding Maintainers.", "significance": "It defines how an agent completes a purchase through cart, feed, and order flows, so its adoption determines which merchants are reachable for agent-initiated checkout via its backers' surfaces.", "trend": "contested", "contested": "ACP (checkout, cart, feed; aligned with ChatGPT Instant Checkout) and UCP (broader full journey including identity linking) are often cast as rivals, but their scopes differ and merchants commonly expose both alongside a Storefront MCP endpoint; whether they converge or simply coexist is unsettled, and ACP remains in beta.", "related": [ "ucp", "stripe-acp", "openai", "mcp" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-acp" }, { "id": "ucp", "subject": "UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol)", "tag": "Full purchase journey", "fact": "Co-developed by Google and Shopify under Apache-2.0 with 20+ ecosystem backers, UCP defines a common language for consumer surfaces, businesses, and payment providers; at Google I/O 2026, Google said Universal Cart uses UCP for cart checkout and merchant handoff.", "asOf": "2026-05-19", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Building the Universal Commerce Protocol", "publisher": "Shopify Engineering", "url": "https://shopify.engineering/UCP", "date": "2026-01-11" }, { "title": "Introducing the Universal Cart and more ways to help you shop", "publisher": "Google", "url": "https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/shopping/google-shopping-cart/", "date": "2026-05-19" } ], "significance": "It specifies the full purchase journey including cart, catalog, and identity linking, so its adoption decides which merchants are reachable for agent purchasing across the surfaces of its backers.", "trend": "contested", "contested": "UCP (full purchase journey) and ACP (checkout) are frequently framed as competing standards, but they differ in scope and often coexist on the same merchant alongside a Storefront MCP endpoint; which becomes the default, if any, is unresolved.", "related": [ "acp", "shopify", "google", "a2a" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-ucp" }, { "id": "a2a", "subject": "A2A (Agent2Agent)", "tag": "Agent delegation", "fact": "Originated at Google, now Linux Foundation-hosted. Reached its first stable spec (v1.0); at its one-year mark (2026-04-09) reported 150+ supporting organizations including AWS, Microsoft, IBM, Salesforce, SAP, and ServiceNow.", "asOf": "2026-04-09", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "A2A Protocol Surpasses 150 Organizations", "publisher": "Linux Foundation", "url": "https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/a2a-protocol-surpasses-150-organizations-lands-in-major-cloud-platforms-and-sees-enterprise-production-use-in-first-year", "date": "2026-04-09" }, { "title": "Agent2Agent (A2A) Protocol documentation", "publisher": "a2a-protocol.org", "url": "https://a2a-protocol.org/latest/", "date": "2026-04-09" } ], "significance": "It governs how one agent delegates a task to another, so a commerce agent's ability to hand off to payment, fulfillment, or specialist agents depends on its reach.", "trend": "consolidating", "related": [ "mcp", "ap2", "ucp" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-a2a" }, { "id": "a2ui", "subject": "A2UI", "tag": "Agent-to-user UI", "fact": "Apache-2.0 declarative generative-UI standard from Google with CopilotKit and community contributions (agents return JSON UI descriptions rendered from a client-side catalog, not executable code). Version 0.9 released 2026-04-17.", "asOf": "2026-04-17", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "A2UI v0.9: portable, framework-agnostic generative UI", "publisher": "Google Developers Blog", "url": "https://developers.googleblog.com/a2ui-v0-9-generative-ui/", "date": "2026-04-17" }, { "title": "google/A2UI", "publisher": "GitHub", "url": "https://github.com/a2ui-project/a2ui", "date": "2026-04-17" } ], "significance": "It defines a portable way for agents to return UI descriptions rendered from a client catalog, determining whether agent-generated shopping interfaces work across frontends without custom code.", "trend": "emerging", "contested": "It overlaps with MCP Apps and AG-UI in the agent-interface space, and which approach merchants and clients adopt for commerce UIs is unresolved.", "related": [ "ag-ui", "mcp-apps", "ucp" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-a2ui" }, { "id": "ag-ui", "subject": "AG-UI", "tag": "Agent-user interaction", "fact": "Open agent-to-frontend protocol originated by CopilotKit, using streamed events and bidirectional state, with SDKs in TypeScript, Python, Kotlin, Java, and Go. AWS Bedrock AgentCore Runtime added AG-UI support in March 2026.", "asOf": "2026-03-13", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "AG-UI Protocol: bridging agents to any front end", "publisher": "CopilotKit", "url": "https://www.copilotkit.ai/blog/ag-ui-protocol-bridging-agents-to-any-front-end", "date": "2025-06-02" }, { "title": "Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Runtime now supports the AG-UI protocol", "publisher": "AWS", "url": "https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2026/03/amazon-bedrock-agentcore-runtime-ag-ui-protocol/", "date": "2026-03-13" } ], "significance": "It standardizes streamed, bidirectional state between an agent and a frontend, determining how live shopping interactions are wired between an agent and a merchant's user interface.", "trend": "emerging", "contested": "It competes with A2UI and MCP Apps for the agent-interface layer, and no single standard has consolidated agent-to-frontend interaction.", "related": [ "a2ui", "mcp-apps", "aws-agentcore-payments" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-ag-ui" }, { "id": "a2a-agent-card-discovery", "subject": "A2A Agent Card discovery (.well-known/agent-card.json)", "fact": "The Agent2Agent (A2A) Protocol — an open Linux Foundation project contributed by Google — specifies agent discovery via an Agent Card JSON document at the RFC 8615 path 'https://{domain}/.well-known/agent-card.json' (legacy 'agent.json'), declaring identity, the A2A service endpoint URL, capabilities (e.g. streaming, pushNotifications), authentication schemes, and AgentSkill objects. The current published specification line is v0.3.0.", "tag": "agent-discovery", "asOf": "2026-01-31", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Agent2Agent (A2A) Protocol Official Specification v0.3.0", "publisher": "A2A Protocol", "url": "https://a2a-protocol.org/v0.3.0/specification/", "date": "2026-01-31" }, { "title": "Agent Discovery", "publisher": "A2A Protocol", "url": "https://a2a-protocol.org/latest/topics/agent-discovery/", "date": "2026-01-31" } ], "significance": "Defines the standardized well-known document by which a buying agent discovers a remote seller/merchant agent's endpoint, skills, and auth requirements.", "trend": "consolidating", "related": [ "a2a", "ucp" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-a2a-agent-card-discovery" }, { "id": "emvco-agentic-payments-framework", "subject": "EMVCo agentic payments specifications work", "fact": "EMVCo announced (November 2025) it is studying how its EMV Specifications — EMV 3-D Secure (3DS), EMV Payment Tokenisation, and EMV Secure Remote Commerce (SRC) — can be enhanced for card-based agentic payments where AI agents initiate transactions without direct consumer involvement. 2026 priorities include a schema for Digital Payment Credentials for interoperable provisioning/verification, and EMV Payment Tokenisation Technical Framework v2.4 DRAFT (enhancing the Payment Account Reference / PAR element) has a comment period ending 1 May 2026.", "tag": "standards-body", "asOf": "2026-01-31", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "EMVCo Working on How Global Specifications Can Support Agentic Payments", "publisher": "EMVCo", "url": "https://www.emvco.com/news/emvco-working-on-how-global-specifications-can-support-agentic-payments/", "date": "2025-11-20" }, { "title": "Enabling Seamless and Secure Payments in 2026", "publisher": "EMVCo", "url": "https://www.emvco.com/knowledge-hub/enabling-seamless-and-secure-payments-in-2026/", "date": "2026-01-31" } ], "significance": "Signals that the core card-network specification body (3DS, tokenization, SRC) is moving to formally accommodate agent-initiated transactions.", "trend": "emerging", "related": [ "visa-tap", "mastercard-agent-pay" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-emvco-agentic-payments-framework" }, { "id": "alipay-agentic-commerce-trust-protocol", "subject": "Alipay Agentic Commerce Trust Protocol (China)", "fact": "In January 2026 Alipay (Ant Group) launched what it describes as China's first Agentic Commerce Trust Protocol, with partners including Alibaba's Qwen App and Taobao Instant Commerce, to create a standardized 'common language' for trusted AI-agent-initiated transactions on a user's behalf. Alipay AI Pay reported exceeding 100 million users in February 2026 and is positioned as commercially scaled AI-native payment infrastructure; Alipay later debuted an AI Wallet and Token Pay (May 2026) for the agentic economy.", "tag": "regional-standard", "asOf": "2026-05-26", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "Alipay Hits 120 Million Weekly AI Agent Transactions", "publisher": "FinTech Magazine", "url": "https://fintechmagazine.com/news/alipay-hits-120m-weekly-ai-agent-transactions", "date": "2026-02-13" }, { "title": "Alipay Launches Next-Generation AI Payment Infrastructure, Debuts AI Wallet and Token Pay", "publisher": "Business Wire", "url": "https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260526337824/en/Alipay-Launches-Next-Generation-AI-Payment-Infrastructure-Debuts-AI-Wallet-and-Token-Pay-to-Power-Agentic-Economy", "date": "2026-05-26" } ], "significance": "Represents a distinct China-region agent-payment trust standard developing in parallel to the US/EU card-network and protocol efforts.", "trend": "emerging", "contested": "Primarily ecosystem-specific to Alipay/Alibaba rather than a neutral cross-industry standard.", "related": [ "mastercard-agent-pay" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-alipay-agentic-commerce-trust-protocol" }, { "id": "mcp-sep-2133-extensions-framework", "subject": "MCP Extensions Framework (SEP-2133)", "fact": "SEP-2133 established a formal MCP Extensions framework that lets capabilities ship and stabilize as opt-in extensions before (if ever) entering the core spec; extensions are advertised via an 'extensions' field in ClientCapabilities and ServerCapabilities and identified by reverse-domain notation (e.g. 'io.modelcontextprotocol/oauth-client-credentials'), with official extensions in 'github.com/modelcontextprotocol/ext-*' repos. The PR was merged and marked final on January 26-27, 2026 by unanimous core-maintainer vote.", "tag": "mcp-governance", "asOf": "2026-01-27", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "SEP-2133: Extensions framework for MCP (PR #2133)", "publisher": "Model Context Protocol", "url": "https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/modelcontextprotocol/pull/2133", "date": "2026-01-27" } ], "significance": "Decouples agent-commerce-relevant MCP capabilities (UI, payments handlers) from the core spec release train, letting them version independently.", "trend": "advancing", "related": [ "mcp-apps", "mcp-server-cards-sep-2127" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-mcp-sep-2133-extensions-framework" }, { "id": "mcp-server-cards-sep-2127", "subject": "MCP Server Cards (SEP-2127 / SEP-1649)", "fact": "SEP-2127 (originating from SEP-1649) proposes 'MCP Server Cards' served at '/.well-known/mcp/server-card.json' so clients, crawlers, and registries can discover an MCP server's identity, transports, protocol versions, capabilities, and auth requirements before connecting. As of the cited thread the proposal remained open in draft status (filed January 21, 2026), not yet merged into the core spec.", "tag": "agent-discovery", "asOf": "2026-01-21", "verification": "developing", "sources": [ { "title": "SEP-2127: MCP Server Cards - HTTP Server Discovery via .well-known (PR #2127)", "publisher": "Model Context Protocol (GitHub)", "url": "https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/modelcontextprotocol/pull/2127", "date": "2026-01-21" } ], "significance": "Defines the pre-connection discovery document that lets an agent find and vet a merchant's MCP commerce endpoint without a live session.", "trend": "emerging", "contested": "Competing/overlapping discovery proposals (SEP-1649, SEP-1960, IETF draft-serra) exist for the same well-known surface.", "related": [ "ucp" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-mcp-server-cards-sep-2127" }, { "id": "acp-product-feed-spec", "subject": "ACP Product Feed specification", "fact": "The ACP Product Feed spec defines the catalog ingestion format ChatGPT uses to index merchant inventory: a gzip-compressed file (.jsonl.gz, .csv.gz, or .xml.gz) pushed to an OpenAI-provided endpoint with daily updates, carrying fields including title (max 150 chars), description (max 5,000 chars), price with ISO 4217 currency code, availability, images, and per-item eligibility flags for search and checkout.", "tag": "agent-feed-standard", "asOf": "2026-04-17", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Agentic Commerce Protocol", "publisher": "OpenAI Developers", "url": "https://developers.openai.com/commerce", "date": "2026-04-17" }, { "title": "Agentic Commerce Protocol", "publisher": "Stripe Documentation", "url": "https://docs.stripe.com/agentic-commerce/acp", "date": "2026-04-17" } ], "significance": "Defines the structured catalog format that determines whether and how a merchant's products become discoverable and buyable inside ChatGPT.", "trend": "advancing", "related": [ "acp", "ucp" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-acp-product-feed-spec" }, { "id": "mastercard-verifiable-intent", "subject": "Mastercard Agent Pay — Agentic Tokens & Verifiable Intent", "fact": "Mastercard Agent Pay uses Agentic Tokens (an extension of MDES that binds a tokenized card credential to a specific agent, merchant scope, and consent policy) and Verifiable Intent (a tamper-resistant record linking cardholder identity, the consumer's specific instructions, and the agent-merchant interaction). Formal Verifiable Intent pilots began February 2026, with planned integration into Agent Pay's intent APIs; Verifiable Intent was contributed to the FIDO Alliance in April 2026.", "tag": "agent-identity", "asOf": "2026-02-28", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "How Verifiable Intent builds trust in agentic AI commerce", "publisher": "Mastercard Global", "url": "https://www.mastercard.com/global/en/news-and-trends/stories/2026/verifiable-intent.html", "date": "2026-02-28" }, { "title": "Agentic token framework: Driving trusted AI transactions", "publisher": "Mastercard Global", "url": "https://www.mastercard.com/global/en/news-and-trends/stories/2025/agentic-commerce-framework.html", "date": "2025-04-29" } ], "significance": "Defines the card-network mechanism for scoping an agent's spending authority and creating an auditable record of user intent behind each purchase.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "Competes with Visa TAP on agent verification and with Google AP2 on intent/authorization representation.", "related": [ "visa-tap", "ap2", "ap2-fido", "mastercard-agent-pay" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-mastercard-verifiable-intent" }, { "id": "x402-spec-facilitator", "subject": "x402 protocol specification & facilitator interface", "fact": "Coinbase's x402 spec defines the protocol over HTTP 402: payment-requirements format, payment-payload structure, core message schemas, an extensible payment-method scheme (currently 'exact'), and a facilitator interface with standard APIs for verification and settlement so sellers avoid running blockchain infrastructure. CDP's facilitator settles ERC-20 payments on Base, Polygon, Arbitrum, World, and Solana via EIP-3009 (USDC, EURC) or Permit2, with a free tier of 1,000 tx/month then $0.001/tx.", "tag": "payments-protocol", "asOf": "2026-01-31", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "x402 README", "publisher": "x402 Foundation (GitHub)", "url": "https://github.com/x402-foundation/x402/blob/main/README.md", "date": "2026-01-31" }, { "title": "Facilitator", "publisher": "x402 Foundation (GitHub)", "url": "https://github.com/x402-foundation/x402/blob/main/docs/core-concepts/facilitator.md", "date": "2026-01-31" }, { "title": "x402 Overview", "publisher": "Coinbase Developer Documentation", "url": "https://docs.cdp.coinbase.com/x402/welcome", "date": "2026-01-31" } ], "significance": "Specifies the facilitator role and message schemas that let an agent settle a stablecoin payment for resources purely over HTTP.", "trend": "advancing", "related": [ "stripe-mpp", "web-bot-auth", "x402" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-x402-spec-facilitator" } ], "stateOfPlay": "The protocol layer is fragmented across distinct functions — tool integration (MCP), commerce and checkout (ACP, UCP), agent-facing interfaces (MCP Apps, A2UI, AG-UI), and well-known agent/server discovery (A2A Agent Cards, MCP Server Cards) — with several standards moving to neutral foundations while cross-protocol interoperability and a single commerce standard remain unsettled.", "highlights": [ "The base layer is mid-transition: MCP’s stable spec is 2025-11-25, with a 2026-07-28 release candidate (locked 2026-05-21) introducing breaking changes — a stateless core, Tasks moved to an extension, and OAuth 2.0 / OpenID Connect hardening.", "Commerce runs on two competing-but-coexisting protocols — ACP (Stripe/OpenAI/Meta, Apache-2.0, version 2026-04-17, beta, with a daily-update Product Feed spec) and UCP (Google/Shopify, 20+ backers, now tied to Google Universal Cart checkout and merchant handoff).", "Delegation and interface standards are maturing: A2A reached a stable v1.0 with 150+ organizations, A2UI shipped v0.9, and discovery is being standardized via A2A Agent Cards at /.well-known/agent-card.json and the draft MCP Server Cards (SEP-2127).", "Card-network and China-region standards bodies entered the protocol layer — EMVCo is extending 3DS, tokenisation, and SRC for agentic payments, Mastercard’s Agentic Tokens and Verifiable Intent began pilots in February 2026, and Alipay launched what it calls China’s first Agentic Commerce Trust Protocol." ] }, { "id": "payments", "title": "Payment rails", "intro": "How an agent is authorized to pay. The card networks, processors, and crypto rails are each shipping ways to scope, sign, and authenticate agent-initiated transactions; several use cryptographic mandates or merchant-scoped tokens.", "entries": [ { "id": "ap2", "subject": "AP2 (Agent Payments Protocol)", "tag": "Payment protocol", "fact": "Google-originated, Apache-2.0, built on A2A and MCP; agents initiate payments using cryptographically signed Mandates. Announced 2025-09-16 with 60+ organizations (Mastercard, American Express, PayPal, Adyen, Coinbase, others); v0.2.0 (April 2026) added \"Human Not Present\" payments.", "asOf": "2026-04-28", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Announcing Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)", "publisher": "Google Cloud", "url": "https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/announcing-agents-to-payments-ap2-protocol", "date": "2025-09-16" }, { "title": "Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)", "publisher": "GitHub / google-agentic-commerce", "url": "https://github.com/google-agentic-commerce/AP2", "date": "2026-04-28" } ], "significance": "It defines a cross-vendor scheme for proving and signing a user's payment authorization to an agent, a primitive other payment rails can build on top of.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "Whether a vendor-originated mandate scheme becomes the shared standard or competes with network-specific authentication approaches is unresolved.", "related": [ "x402", "ap2-fido", "mastercard-agent-pay", "amex-agentic", "a2a", "visa-tap", "visa-icc", "stripe-acp", "nekuda", "catena-labs" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-ap2" }, { "id": "x402", "subject": "x402", "tag": "Stablecoin rail", "fact": "Open payment standard using the HTTP 402 status code for onchain stablecoin (primarily USDC) payments by agents. Originated by Coinbase (May 2025) and contributed to the Linux Foundation’s new x402 Foundation in April 2026 (founding members listed under Standards governance).", "asOf": "2026-04-02", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Overview — x402", "publisher": "Coinbase Developer Documentation", "url": "https://docs.cdp.coinbase.com/x402/welcome", "date": "2026-03-11" }, { "title": "Linux Foundation launches the x402 Foundation", "publisher": "Linux Foundation", "url": "https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/linux-foundation-is-launching-the-x402-foundation-and-welcoming-the-contribution-of-the-x402-protocol-302732803.html", "date": "2026-04-02" } ], "significance": "It repurposes an existing HTTP status code as a payment-request mechanism, making agent payments addressable at the protocol level rather than through proprietary APIs.", "trend": "advancing", "related": [ "x402-foundation", "coinbase-base-mcp", "aws-agentcore-payments", "allunity", "fireblocks-agentic", "ap2", "crossmint" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-x402" }, { "id": "stripe-acp", "subject": "Stripe / OpenAI — Shared Payment Token", "tag": "Checkout token", "fact": "Stripe and OpenAI released ACP (Apache-2.0) plus the Shared Payment Token, which lets ChatGPT initiate a payment scoped to a specific merchant and cart total without exposing buyer payment credentials. ACP is positioned as payment-provider-agnostic.", "asOf": "2025-09-29", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Stripe powers Instant Checkout in ChatGPT and releases the Agentic Commerce Protocol", "publisher": "Stripe Newsroom", "url": "https://stripe.com/newsroom/news/stripe-openai-instant-checkout", "date": "2025-09-29" } ], "significance": "It separates payment authorization from credential exposure, letting an agent transact on a merchant without the AI surface holding the buyer's card details.", "trend": "advancing", "related": [ "acp", "ap2", "visa-icc", "openai" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-stripe-acp" }, { "id": "visa-tap", "subject": "Visa — Trusted Agent Protocol", "tag": "Agent authentication", "fact": "Open framework (October 2025) to help merchants distinguish legitimate AI agents acting for consumers from malicious bots. By December 2025 Visa reported 100+ ecosystem partners, 30+ building in the Intelligent Commerce sandbox, and 20+ agents integrating directly.", "asOf": "2025-12-18", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Visa and Partners Complete Secure AI Transactions", "publisher": "Visa Newsroom", "url": "https://usa.visa.com/about-visa/newsroom/press-releases.releaseId.21961.html", "date": "2025-12-18" } ], "significance": "It addresses the inverse problem of most payment rails — letting merchants identify a legitimate agent rather than authorizing the buyer — which is a prerequisite for merchants to admit agent traffic at all.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "Whether agent-identity attestation converges on a network framework or an open standard like Web Bot Auth is unresolved.", "related": [ "visa-icc", "web-bot-auth", "ap2" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-visa-tap" }, { "id": "visa-icc", "subject": "Visa — Intelligent Commerce Connect", "tag": "Network integration", "fact": "A unified integration point (2026-04-08) providing payment initiation, tokenization, spend controls, and authentication for AI-agent transactions across multiple protocols (Trusted Agent Protocol, Machine Payments Protocol, ACP, UCP).", "asOf": "2026-04-08", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Visa Opens the Door to AI-Driven Shopping for Businesses Worldwide", "publisher": "Visa Newsroom", "url": "https://usa.visa.com/about-visa/newsroom/press-releases.releaseId.22276.html", "date": "2026-04-08" } ], "significance": "It is a single network endpoint that bridges multiple agent-payment protocols (Trusted Agent Protocol, MPP, ACP, UCP) rather than backing one.", "trend": "advancing", "related": [ "visa-tap", "ap2", "acp", "ucp", "x402-foundation", "web-bot-auth" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-visa-icc" }, { "id": "mastercard-agent-pay", "subject": "Mastercard — Agent Pay", "tag": "Agent payments", "fact": "Banco Santander and Mastercard completed what they described as Europe’s first live end-to-end payment executed by an AI agent within a regulated banking framework (2026-03-02), using Mastercard Agent Pay with PayOS orchestration.", "asOf": "2026-03-02", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Santander and Mastercard complete Europe’s first live AI-agent payment", "publisher": "Banco Santander Press Room", "url": "https://www.santander.com/en/press-room/press-releases/2026/03/santander-and-mastercard-complete-europes-first-live-end-to-end-payment-executed-by-an-ai-agent", "date": "2026-03-02" }, { "title": "Santander and Mastercard complete Europe’s first live end-to-end AI-agent payment", "publisher": "Mastercard Newsroom", "url": "https://www.mastercard.com/news/europe/en/newsroom/press-releases/en/2026/santander-and-mastercard-complete-europe-s-first-live-end-to-end-payment-executed-by-an-ai-agent/", "date": "2026-03-02" } ], "context": "Mastercard Agent Pay was first announced April 2025; this is the first live regulated transaction reported.", "significance": "It demonstrates an agent-executed payment inside an existing regulated banking framework rather than a sandbox, testing whether agent transactions fit current financial regulation.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "What counts as a fully autonomous agent payment versus a human-approved one in these demonstrations is not standardized.", "related": [ "ap2", "ap2-fido", "visa-icc" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-mastercard-agent-pay" }, { "id": "paypal-agentic", "subject": "PayPal — Agent Ready & Store Sync", "tag": "Agent payments", "fact": "PayPal launched agentic services (2025-10-28): \"Agent Ready\" to accept payments on AI surfaces with fraud detection and buyer protection, and \"Store Sync\" for catalog discoverability. Named partners include Wix, BigCommerce/Feedonomics, Shopware, and Perplexity.", "asOf": "2025-10-28", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "PayPal Launches Agentic Commerce Services to Power AI-Driven Shopping", "publisher": "PayPal Newsroom", "url": "https://newsroom.paypal-corp.com/2025-10-28-PayPal-Launches-Agentic-Commerce-Services-to-Power-AI-Driven-Shopping", "date": "2025-10-28" } ], "significance": "It packages both sides of the agent-commerce flow — accepting agent payments and making catalogs discoverable to AI surfaces — from a single processor.", "trend": "advancing", "related": [ "amex-agentic", "stripe-acp", "perplexity", "microsoft" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-paypal-agentic" }, { "id": "amex-agentic", "subject": "American Express", "tag": "Agent payments", "fact": "On 2026-04-14 American Express announced the Agentic Commerce Experiences (ACE) Developer Kit and Amex Agent Purchase Protection, which it says will protect eligible Card Members from charges tied to AI-agent error when an authorized, registered agent sends Amex the Card Member’s authenticated purchase intent. Amex also called for shared industry authentication standards.", "asOf": "2026-04-14", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "American Express Debuts Agentic Commerce Experiences (ACE) Developer Kit and Protection for Registered Agent Purchases", "publisher": "American Express Newsroom", "url": "https://www.americanexpress.com/en-us/newsroom/articles/innovation/american-express-debuts-agentic-commerce-experiences--ace--devel.html", "date": "2026-04-14" }, { "title": "American Express to Back Purchases Made by Customers’ AI Agents", "publisher": "PYMNTS", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/artificial-intelligence-2/2026/american-express-to-back-purchases-made-by-customers-ai-agents/", "date": "2026-04-14" } ], "significance": "It extends issuer liability protection to charges arising from agent error, shifting part of the risk of autonomous purchasing onto the card issuer.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "Which party bears liability when an authorized agent makes an erroneous purchase, and what authentication is required to qualify, is unsettled across issuers.", "related": [ "mastercard-agent-pay", "paypal-agentic", "ap2-fido", "visa-tap" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-amex-agentic" }, { "id": "aws-agentcore-payments", "subject": "AWS — Bedrock AgentCore Payments", "tag": "Agent payments", "fact": "AWS launched Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Payments in preview (2026-05-07), letting agents pay for APIs, web content, and MCP servers. The preview focuses on stablecoin micropayments built on Coinbase’s x402, with Stripe and Privy wallet infrastructure for fiat and stablecoin funding.", "asOf": "2026-05-07", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Agents that transact: introducing Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Payments", "publisher": "AWS Machine Learning Blog", "url": "https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine-learning/agents-that-transact-introducing-amazon-bedrock-agentcore-payments-built-with-coinbase-and-stripe/", "date": "2026-05-07" }, { "title": "Amazon rolls out AI-agent stablecoin payments platform with Coinbase and Stripe", "publisher": "CoinDesk", "url": "https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/05/07/amazon-rolls-out-ai-agent-stablecoin-payments-platform-with-coinbase-and-stripe", "date": "2026-05-07" } ], "context": "Preview only; scoped to sub-dollar agent-to-service micropayments, not consumer retail checkout.", "significance": "It targets agent-to-service payments for APIs and content rather than consumer retail, defining a distinct micropayment use case for agent transactions.", "trend": "emerging", "contested": "Whether agent-to-service micropayments and consumer retail checkout will share rails or remain separate is unresolved.", "related": [ "x402", "coinbase-base-mcp", "fireblocks-agentic", "aws-agentic-shopping-assistant" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-aws-agentcore-payments" }, { "id": "allunity", "subject": "AllUnity", "tag": "Stablecoin rail (EU)", "fact": "AllUnity, a MiCA-regulated European e-money issuer backed by DWS, Flow Traders, and Galaxy, announced (2026-05-20) an x402-powered agentic-payments settlement layer letting European businesses accept agent-initiated transactions and settle to local bank accounts, alongside plans for a Swedish-krona-backed stablecoin targeting a June 2026 debut pending approvals.", "asOf": "2026-05-20", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Germany’s AllUnity plans Swedish krona stablecoin, pushes into AI agentic payments", "publisher": "CoinDesk", "url": "https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/05/20/germany-s-allunity-plans-swedish-krona-stablecoin-pushes-into-ai-agentic-payments", "date": "2026-05-20" }, { "title": "AllUnity plans Swedish krona stablecoin, launches agentic payments infrastructure", "publisher": "The Block", "url": "https://www.theblock.co/post/402027/allunity-plans-swedish-krona-stablecoin-launches-agentic-payments-infrastructure", "date": "2026-05-20" } ], "significance": "It applies a MiCA-regulated EU e-money framework to agentic settlement, testing whether agent stablecoin payments can operate within European financial regulation and settle to bank accounts.", "trend": "emerging", "contested": "Whether regulator approvals materialize on the stated timeline and how MiCA treats agent-initiated stablecoin transactions is unresolved.", "related": [ "x402", "fireblocks-agentic", "coinbase-base-mcp", "eu-ai-act" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-allunity" }, { "id": "coinbase-base-mcp", "subject": "Coinbase / Base — Base MCP", "tag": "Stablecoin rail", "fact": "Coinbase’s Base launched Base MCP (2026-05-26), an MCP gateway connecting AI assistants (e.g. Claude, Cursor) to users’ Base Accounts for onchain actions including x402 payments with USDC, subject to user approvals.", "asOf": "2026-05-26", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Coinbase pushes further into AI payments with new MCP for Base network", "publisher": "Fortune", "url": "https://fortune.com/2026/05/26/coinbase-pushes-further-into-ai-payments-with-new-mcp-for-base-network/", "date": "2026-05-26" }, { "title": "Coinbase’s Base gives AI agents new crypto wallet powers", "publisher": "crypto.news", "url": "https://crypto.news/coinbases-base-gives-ai-agents-new-crypto-wallet-powers/", "date": "2026-05-26" } ], "significance": "It connects onchain wallets to AI assistants through MCP, bridging the tool-integration protocol layer directly to a stablecoin payment rail under user approval.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "Self-reported onchain transaction and volume figures are not independently verified.", "related": [ "x402", "aws-agentcore-payments", "fireblocks-agentic", "mcp" ], "context": "Base reported 3.1M x402 transactions and ~$1.2M transferred in the prior 30 days; these self-reported onchain figures are not independently verified.", "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-coinbase-base-mcp" }, { "id": "robinhood-agent-card", "subject": "Robinhood", "tag": "Agent card payments", "fact": "Robinhood launched (2026-05-27) agentic purchasing on its Gold card: users direct AI agents (via Robinhood’s MCP) to make conditional purchases that transact with a virtual card number rather than the real card, with monthly spending caps and transaction notifications. It also launched agent-based trading.", "asOf": "2026-05-27", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "Robinhood launches agentic trading and agentic credit card payments", "publisher": "Fortune", "url": "https://fortune.com/2026/05/27/robinhood-ai-agents/", "date": "2026-05-27" } ], "significance": "It uses virtual card numbers with spending caps as the control surface for agent purchases, an alternative to cryptographic mandates or stablecoin rails for scoping agent spend.", "trend": "emerging", "related": [ "amex-agentic", "mastercard-agent-pay", "mcp" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-robinhood-agent-card" }, { "id": "fireblocks-agentic", "subject": "Fireblocks", "tag": "Agent payments infra", "fact": "Fireblocks launched an Agentic Payments Suite (2026-05-22): an Agentic Payments Gateway for stablecoin merchant acceptance and Agentic Wallets that delegate payment authority to agents within set limits, with off-ramp/conversion and audit trails. Fireblocks also joined the x402 Foundation.", "asOf": "2026-05-22", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "Fireblocks rolls out Agentic Payments Suite for stablecoins", "publisher": "The Paypers", "url": "https://thepaypers.com/payments/news/fireblocks-launches-agentic-payments-suite-for-stablecoin-transactions", "date": "2026-05-22" } ], "significance": "It supplies the wallet, delegation-limit, and settlement infrastructure that lets other businesses accept or issue agent stablecoin payments rather than serving end users directly.", "trend": "emerging", "related": [ "x402", "x402-foundation", "aws-agentcore-payments", "coinbase-base-mcp", "allunity" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-fireblocks-agentic" }, { "id": "stripe-mpp", "subject": "Stripe — Machine Payments Protocol (MPP)", "fact": "Stripe and Tempo co-authored the Machine Payments Protocol (MPP), an open HTTP-native standard for agent machine-to-machine payments, announced 2026-03-18; at Stripe Sessions 2026 (2026-04-29) Stripe added a streaming-payments primitive and the ability to accept MPP payments in stablecoins and in fiat (cards, Klarna, Affirm) via Shared Payment Tokens.", "tag": "Agent payment protocol", "asOf": "2026-04-29", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Introducing the Machine Payments Protocol", "publisher": "Stripe", "url": "https://stripe.com/blog/machine-payments-protocol", "date": "2026-03-18" }, { "title": "Everything we announced at Sessions 2026", "publisher": "Stripe", "url": "https://stripe.com/blog/everything-we-announced-at-sessions-2026", "date": "2026-04-29" } ], "significance": "It puts a major payments incumbent and a payments-focused L1 behind one open standard for agent-initiated payments spanning stablecoin and fiat rails.", "trend": "advancing", "related": [ "stripe-acp", "acp", "ap2", "x402", "visa-icc" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-stripe-mpp" }, { "id": "slash-for-agents", "subject": "Slash for Agents", "fact": "Slash exposes its full card/payments/treasury platform to any MCP-compatible AI agent: agents can create virtual and physical cards, set/update per-card or per-group spend limits (daily, monthly, lifetime), send ACH or Slash Pay payments, manage invoices and expense reports, query transactions, and use built-in stablecoin on/off ramps, with unlimited virtual cards offering up to 2% cashback.", "tag": "agent-card", "asOf": "2026-05-01", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "Slash for Agents — Agentic Commerce via MCP", "publisher": "Slash", "url": "https://www.slash.com/platform/agents", "date": "2026-05-01" }, { "title": "Agent card payments compared: Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Ramp and Slash", "publisher": "Crossmint", "url": "https://www.crossmint.com/learn/agent-card-payments-compared", "date": "2026-04-01" } ], "significance": "Exposes an entire fintech treasury/card stack through MCP as agent-callable tools with stablecoin ramps — a fully agent-native business-banking surface rather than a single card product.", "trend": "emerging", "related": [ "crossmint" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-slash-for-agents" }, { "id": "block-moneybot-cashapp", "subject": "Block MoneyBot (Cash App) / Square Managerbot", "fact": "Block (parent of Square, Cash App, Afterpay) built MoneyBot, an LLM-plus-tools agent inside Cash App that can draft and execute payments, P2P transfers, bill requests, and savings/Bitcoin/stock actions from natural-language commands (e.g. 'Send $500 to Reese for rent'), and unveiled Managerbot, a proactive Square AI agent for sellers. Block also contributed its open-source agent framework Goose to the Linux Foundation's Agentic AI Foundation (Dec 9, 2025).", "tag": "fintech-agent", "asOf": "2026-01-01", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "Block introduces Managerbot, a proactive Square AI agent", "publisher": "VentureBeat", "url": "https://venturebeat.com/data/block-introduces-managerbot-a-proactive-square-ai-agent-and-the-clearest", "date": "2026-01-01" }, { "title": "OpenAI, Anthropic, and Block join new Linux Foundation effort to standardize the AI agent era", "publisher": "TechCrunch", "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/09/openai-anthropic-and-block-join-new-linux-foundation-effort-to-standardize-the-ai-agent-era/", "date": "2025-12-09" } ], "significance": "A consumer wallet/merchant-acquirer (Cash App + Square) turning its own money-movement into agent-executable actions — the in-house-agent variant of agentic payments, distinct from third-party agents transacting on a network.", "trend": "emerging", "related": [ "paypal-agentic" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-block-moneybot-cashapp" }, { "id": "forter-agentic-identity", "subject": "Forter identity monitoring for agentic commerce", "fact": "On May 13, 2026, fraud/identity vendor Forter launched identity monitoring for agentic commerce: enhanced AI agent detection distinguishing agent types, AI-driven browsing identification, an Agentic Dashboard visualizing all detected agent activity on a merchant's site, and Public Network Insights sharing anonymized agentic-behavior data across its network — recognizing both agent and human identities to let legitimate agent transactions through payment while blocking fraud. Forter recorded an 18,510% day-over-day jump in agentic traffic after ChatGPT Agent's debut.", "tag": "fraud-identity", "asOf": "2026-05-13", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "Forter Launches Identity Monitoring For Agentic Commerce", "publisher": "MarTech360", "url": "https://martech360.com/news/forter-launches-identity-monitoring-for-agentic-commerce/", "date": "2026-05-13" } ], "significance": "The fraud/identity layer that gates the pay step is now agent-aware — distinguishing authorized agents from fraudulent bots is becoming load-bearing infrastructure as agentic traffic surges, and the 18,510% stat quantifies how fast merchants are being hit.", "trend": "emerging", "related": [ "skyfire-kyapay-visa" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-forter-agentic-identity" }, { "id": "skyfire-kyapay-visa", "subject": "Skyfire KYAPay x Visa Intelligent Commerce demo", "fact": "On Dec 18, 2025, Skyfire demonstrated a secure agentic-commerce purchase combining its open KYAPay protocol and Know Your Agent (KYA) identity framework with Visa Intelligent Commerce — binding platform, agent, and human-principal identities plus user mandates to a card credential. Skyfire's KYAPay (launched June 2025) implements instant stablecoin (USDC) settlement and supports microtransactions below $5 for providers like Anthropic, Cohere, Replicate, and Hugging Face.", "tag": "fraud-identity", "asOf": "2025-12-18", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Skyfire Demonstrates Secure Agentic Commerce Purchase Using KYAPay and Visa Intelligent Commerce", "publisher": "Businesswire", "url": "https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251218520399/en/Skyfire-Demonstrates-Secure-Agentic-Commerce-Purchase-Using-the-KYAPay-Protocol-and-Visa-Intelligent-Commerce", "date": "2025-12-18" }, { "title": "Skyfire Launches Open KYAPay Protocol With Agent Checkout", "publisher": "Businesswire", "url": "https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250626772489/en/Skyfire-Launches-Open-KYAPay-Protocol-With-Agent-Checkout", "date": "2025-06-26" } ], "significance": "A net-new bridge event: an agent-identity/stablecoin-rail startup (Skyfire) interoperating with a card network's agent platform (Visa) shows the KYA-mandate layer and card rails converging rather than competing.", "trend": "emerging", "related": [ "forter-agentic-identity", "visa-icc" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-skyfire-kyapay-visa" }, { "id": "capitalone-discover-brex", "subject": "Capital One (post-Discover) + Brex agent spend", "fact": "Capital One closed its acquisition of Discover Financial Services in 2025 (gaining the Discover/Diners/PULSE closed-loop network) and on Jan 22, 2026 agreed to acquire AI-spend-management fintech Brex for $5.15 billion; Brex uses AI agents to automate finance workflows and control spend.", "tag": "card-network", "asOf": "2026-01-22", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Capital One Financial Corp - Form 8-K FY2026", "publisher": "SEC / Capital One", "url": "https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/927628/000119312526019543/d97758dex991.htm", "date": "2026-01-22" }, { "title": "Discover's Network of Networks Strategy", "publisher": "Prove", "url": "https://www.prove.com/blog/discovers-network-of-networks-strategy-makes-it-more-global-and-much-bigger-than-it-appears", "date": "2025-06-01" } ], "significance": "Consolidates a fourth US card network (Discover) under Capital One and pairs it with an agent-driven corporate-spend fintech (Brex), positioning an issuer-plus-network to control both agent-payment rails and agent spend tooling.", "trend": "consolidating", "contested": "Brex acquisition was a signed definitive agreement as of Jan 22, 2026; close was pending.", "related": [ "ramp-agent-cards", "visa-icc" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-capitalone-discover-brex" }, { "id": "circle-agent-stack", "subject": "Circle Agent Stack", "fact": "On May 11, 2026, USDC issuer Circle launched Circle Agent Stack, a full suite positioning AI agents themselves as the customer: Agent Wallets (permissionless, policy-controlled wallets that hold and transact USDC within guardrails), Nanopayments via Circle Gateway (gas-free USDC transfers as small as $0.000001 at machine speed), an Agent Marketplace where agents discover/evaluate/pay for services programmatically, and Circle CLI.", "tag": "stablecoin-rail", "asOf": "2026-05-11", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Circle Powers the Agentic Economy with New AI Infrastructure", "publisher": "Circle", "url": "https://www.circle.com/pressroom/circle-launches-ai-infrastructure-to-power-the-agentic-economy", "date": "2026-05-11" }, { "title": "Introducing Circle Agent Stack: Financial Infrastructure for the Agentic Economy", "publisher": "Circle", "url": "https://www.circle.com/blog/introducing-circle-agent-stack-financial-infrastructure-for-the-agentic-economy", "date": "2026-05-11" } ], "significance": "Circle moves from being a settlement token (USDC) in others' agent rails to operating a full agent-native wallet, payments, and discovery stack.", "trend": "advancing", "related": [ "x402", "x402-foundation", "coinbase-base-mcp" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-circle-agent-stack" }, { "id": "solana-google-paysh", "subject": "Pay.sh (Solana Foundation + Google Cloud)", "fact": "The Solana Foundation and Google Cloud launched Pay.sh (reported May 6, 2026), a stablecoin payment gateway letting AI agents discover, price-check, and pay for APIs per-request on Solana with no accounts, API keys, or subscriptions. It runs as a Google Cloud API proxy, uses the x402 standard, also supports Tempo/Stripe's MPP, and covers Google Cloud APIs (Gemini, BigQuery, Vertex AI) plus 50+ community providers; x402 had processed 35M transactions on Solana by March 2026.", "tag": "stablecoin-rail", "asOf": "2026-05-06", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Stablecoins enter AI payments as Solana and Google launch Pay.sh", "publisher": "crypto.news", "url": "https://crypto.news/stablecoins-enter-ai-payments-as-solana-and-google-launch-pay-sh/", "date": "2026-05-06" }, { "title": "What is x402? | Payment Protocol for AI Agents on Solana", "publisher": "Solana", "url": "https://solana.com/x402/what-is-x402", "date": "2026-03-01" } ], "significance": "A hyperscaler putting its own paid APIs behind agent-payable stablecoin rails, on the same x402 standard it co-governs, extends agent payment beyond retail merchants to compute/API providers.", "trend": "emerging", "related": [ "x402", "x402-foundation", "stripe-mpp" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-solana-google-paysh" }, { "id": "coinbase-agentic-wallets", "subject": "Coinbase Agentic Wallets", "fact": "On February 11, 2026, Coinbase Developer Platform launched Agentic Wallets, described as the first wallet infrastructure built specifically for AI agents — letting agents hold funds, send payments, trade tokens, earn yield, and transact on-chain without human approval at each step, built on the x402 protocol.", "tag": "agent-wallet", "asOf": "2026-02-12", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Introducing Agentic Wallets: Give Your Agents the Power of Autonomy", "publisher": "Coinbase", "url": "https://www.coinbase.com/developer-platform/discover/launches/agentic-wallets", "date": "2026-02-11" }, { "title": "Coinbase Debuts Crypto Wallet Infrastructure for AI Agents", "publisher": "PYMNTS", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/cryptocurrency/2026/coinbase-debuts-crypto-wallet-infrastructure-for-ai-agents/", "date": "2026-02-12" } ], "significance": "A distinct product from Base MCP — Coinbase's bid to be the default custody and spend layer for autonomous agents.", "trend": "advancing", "related": [ "x402", "x402-foundation", "coinbase-base-mcp" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-coinbase-agentic-wallets" }, { "id": "worldpay-acp-mcp", "subject": "Worldpay agentic commerce (ACP support + Worldpay MCP)", "fact": "Worldpay announced support for OpenAI's Agentic Commerce Protocol on Oct 29, 2025 (enabling ChatGPT Instant Checkout for participating merchants with acquirer-agnostic token management and automatic credential updates), then on Nov 24, 2025 launched Worldpay MCP, a publicly available Model Context Protocol server spec for AI-driven, agent-enabled payment integration. Worldpay generated over 12 billion tokens in 2024.", "tag": "processor", "asOf": "2025-11-24", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Worldpay to Unlock New Commerce Channels for Merchants with OpenAI Agentic Commerce Protocol", "publisher": "Worldpay (Businesswire)", "url": "https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251028851071/en/Worldpay-to-Unlock-New-Commerce-Channels-for-Merchants-with-OpenAI-Agentic-Commerce-Protocol", "date": "2025-10-29" }, { "title": "Worldpay Accelerates the Future of Agentic Commerce with Model Context Protocol (MCP)", "publisher": "Worldpay (Businesswire)", "url": "https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251124162914/en/Worldpay-Accelerates-the-Future-of-Agentic-Commerce-with-Model-Context-Protocol-MCP-A-Publicly-Available-Server-Powering-AI-Driven-Agent-Enabled-Payments", "date": "2025-11-24" } ], "significance": "A top-tier acquirer making its tokenization, credential management, and fraud stack agent-addressable via both ACP and a public MCP server.", "trend": "advancing", "related": [ "acp", "visa-icc" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-worldpay-acp-mcp" }, { "id": "unionpay-apop", "subject": "UnionPay Agentic Payment Open Protocol (APOP)", "fact": "On April 2-3, 2026, China UnionPay released the Agentic Payment Open Protocol (APOP) framework, providing agent identity lifecycle management, end-to-end intent management with trust verification, single-sign-on user identity management, and payment authorization across UnionPay's global acceptance network. Launch was paired with a live Hong Kong transaction in which Evonet's AI assistant booked and paid for a taxi via ride-hailing platform Hoppa.", "tag": "card-network", "asOf": "2026-04-03", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "UnionPay Launches Agentic Payment Open Protocol Framework", "publisher": "PR Newswire / UnionPay International", "url": "https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/unionpay-launches-agentic-payment-open-protocol-framework-building-an-open-trusted-smart-payment-ecosystem-302733540.html", "date": "2026-04-02" }, { "title": "UnionPay launches Agentic Payment Open Protocol framework", "publisher": "The Paypers", "url": "https://thepaypers.com/payments/news/unionpay-rolls-out-agentic-payment-open-protocol-framework-for-ai-driven-payments", "date": "2026-04-03" } ], "significance": "The major Chinese network enters with its own agent-payment standard plus a live transaction, signaling the agentic-payment protocol race is global.", "trend": "emerging", "related": [ "visa-icc", "mastercard-agent-pay" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-unionpay-apop" }, { "id": "affirm-google-bnpl", "subject": "Affirm agentic BNPL (Google + UCP)", "fact": "On May 12, 2026, Affirm expanded its Google partnership to roll its pay-over-time options into Google Search (including AI Mode) and the Gemini app at checkout via Google Pay, and independently developed early BNPL extensions for the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP, co-developed by Google and Shopify), plus support for Google's Agent-to-Agent and Agent Payments protocols. Affirm also expanded its Stripe partnership for agentic-commerce payments.", "tag": "bnpl", "asOf": "2026-05-13", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Affirm works with Google to make AI shopping payments clear and simple", "publisher": "Affirm Holdings", "url": "https://investors.affirm.com/news-releases/news-release-details/affirm-works-google-make-ai-shopping-payments-clear-and-simple", "date": "2026-05-12" }, { "title": "Google partners with Affirm, Klarna on BNPL for agentic commerce", "publisher": "Digital Commerce 360", "url": "https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2026/05/13/affirm-klarna-google-bnpl-agentic-commerce/", "date": "2026-05-13" } ], "significance": "BNPL providers writing protocol extensions (UCP) and embedding into AI-search checkout shows agent-payment standards expanding beyond cards to pay-over-time.", "trend": "advancing", "related": [ "ucp", "google", "stripe-mpp", "klarna-agentic-commerce" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-affirm-google-bnpl" }, { "id": "ramp-agent-cards", "subject": "Ramp Agent Cards", "fact": "By April 28, 2026, Ramp said Agent Cards were in early access — virtual cards for AI agents built on Visa Intelligent Commerce with tokenized credentials, each scoped to a single agent and transaction, with merchant-level locking to a specific vendor, hard per-transaction spend caps, approval workflows, and category restrictions applied before approval.", "tag": "agent-card", "asOf": "2026-04-28", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Virtual Cards for AI Agents: How They Work & What to Look For", "publisher": "Ramp", "url": "https://ramp.com/blog/virtual-cards-for-ai-agents", "date": "2026-04-28" } ], "significance": "A spend-management fintech operationalizing Visa Intelligent Commerce into scoped single-use agent cards with limits, vendor locks, and approvals.", "trend": "advancing", "related": [ "visa-icc", "robinhood-agent-card" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-ramp-agent-cards" } ], "stateOfPlay": "Card networks, processors, stablecoin issuers, and a wave of agent-payment infrastructure startups are each shipping distinct mechanisms to authorize and authenticate agent-initiated payments — cryptographic mandates, merchant-scoped tokens, virtual cards with spend caps, and onchain stablecoin rails — with no single approach yet dominant, though several are consolidating under shared bodies (the FIDO Alliance for AP2, the x402 Foundation).", "highlights": [ "Agent payments split into protocols (AP2 mandates; x402 and Stripe/Tempo’s Machine Payments Protocol for stablecoins) and card-network/processor programs (Visa Intelligent Commerce Connect bridging TAP/MPP/ACP/UCP, Mastercard Agent Pay, Amex’s ACE, PayPal Agent Ready, Worldpay’s ACP support plus a public MCP server, and Affirm’s BNPL extensions for UCP).", "The race is global: China UnionPay released its Agentic Payment Open Protocol (APOP) with a live Hong Kong transaction in April 2026, alongside Visa and Mastercard’s programs.", "A distinct agent-payment infrastructure cohort emerged in 2026 — Circle Agent Stack, Coinbase Agentic Wallets and Base MCP, Fireblocks’ Agentic Payments Suite, Slash for Agents, Skyfire’s KYAPay/Know Your Agent demo with Visa, and Forter’s agent-aware identity monitoring (which recorded an 18,510% day-over-day jump in agentic traffic after ChatGPT Agent’s debut).", "On-chain volume remains small (an independent analysis put x402 at roughly $28,000/day, about half estimated to be wash trading), even as Mastercard and Santander completed Europe’s first live end-to-end AI-agent payment within a regulated banking framework in March 2026." ] }, { "id": "platforms", "title": "Platform posture", "intro": "Where the large platforms currently stand on AI shopping. Postures are shifting quickly; each entry reflects the most recent confirmed move.", "entries": [ { "id": "openai", "subject": "OpenAI", "tag": "Discovery, then merchant checkout", "fact": "On 2026-03-24 OpenAI stated its initial in-ChatGPT Instant Checkout lacked the flexibility it wanted, shifted focus to product discovery, and now routes purchases to merchant-owned checkout (with deeper integrations via ChatGPT apps), keeping ACP as connecting infrastructure.", "asOf": "2026-03-24", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "OpenAI reveals updates to its agentic commerce experience for ChatGPT", "publisher": "Digital Commerce 360", "url": "https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2026/03/24/openai-agentic-commerce-updates-chatgpt-walmart/", "date": "2026-03-24" }, { "title": "OpenAI revamps shopping in ChatGPT after struggling with Instant Checkout", "publisher": "CNBC", "url": "https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/24/openai-revamps-shopping-experience-in-chatgpt-after-instant-checkout.html", "date": "2026-03-24" } ], "significance": "Its shift from operating checkout to routing purchases to merchant-owned flows is a reversal by the platform that first shipped in-chat checkout, placing discovery rather than transaction control at the center of its near-term surface.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "Whether shifting checkout back to merchants reflects a durable strategy or a temporary response to integration limits is not settled.", "related": [ "acp", "stripe-acp", "openai-apps-sdk", "mcp-apps", "walmart-chatgpt", "anthropic", "meta", "forrester-state" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-openai" }, { "id": "google", "subject": "Google", "tag": "Universal Cart + AI Mode", "fact": "At I/O (2026-05-19) Google announced Universal Cart, a cross-surface cart spanning Search, Gemini, YouTube, and Gmail (Search and Gemini in the US from summer 2026), building on agentic checkout it began rolling out in Search AI Mode and Gemini with Google Pay confirmation.", "asOf": "2026-05-19", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Google Shopping introduces Universal Cart and agentic shopping", "publisher": "Google", "url": "https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/shopping/google-shopping-cart/", "date": "2026-05-19" }, { "title": "Gemini app and AI Mode adding product checkout", "publisher": "9to5Google", "url": "https://9to5google.com/2026/01/11/gemini-ai-mode-checkout/", "date": "2026-01-11" } ], "significance": "A cart that spans Search, Gemini, YouTube, and Gmail distributes checkout across Google’s own surfaces rather than through a standalone shopping app.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "How broadly Universal Cart will extend beyond Search and Gemini, and beyond the US, remains undefined.", "related": [ "ucp", "ap2", "a2ui", "shopify", "google-universal-cart-launch" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-google" }, { "id": "amazon", "subject": "Amazon", "tag": "Alexa for Shopping", "fact": "On 2026-05-13 Amazon retired the Rufus chatbot brand and made Alexa for Shopping its unified US AI shopping assistant; its \"Buy for Me\" feature locates products on third-party retailer sites and completes purchases on the user’s behalf.", "asOf": "2026-05-13", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Amazon ditches Rufus chatbot, launches Alexa shopping agent", "publisher": "CNBC", "url": "https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/13/amazon-ditches-rufus-ai-chatbot-in-favor-of-alexa-shopping-agent.html", "date": "2026-05-13" }, { "title": "Amazon launches AI agent “Alexa for Shopping”", "publisher": "Digital Commerce 360", "url": "https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2026/05/13/amazon-launches-ai-agent-alexa-for-shopping/", "date": "2026-05-13" } ], "significance": "Consolidating its AI shopping under one consumer brand that also completes purchases on third-party retailer sites reaches beyond Amazon’s own marketplace.", "trend": "consolidating", "contested": "Whether retailers and rivals will accept Amazon's agent transacting on their sites, given its parallel litigation against agent access, is disputed.", "related": [ "aws-agentic-shopping-assistant", "amazon-perplexity-injunction", "amazon-perplexity-appeal", "perplexity", "walmart-chatgpt" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-amazon" }, { "id": "shopify", "subject": "Shopify", "tag": "Commerce for Agents", "fact": "Announced an agentic commerce platform (2026-01-11) built on the Universal Commerce Protocol: every paid plan gets a Storefront MCP endpoint enabled by default at no extra cost, exposing catalogs to AI agents, plus an Agentic Storefronts dashboard surfacing ChatGPT/Copilot/AI Mode traffic.", "asOf": "2026-01-11", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "The agentic commerce platform: connecting any merchant to every AI conversation", "publisher": "Shopify", "url": "https://www.shopify.com/news/ai-commerce-at-scale", "date": "2026-01-11" }, { "title": "Build commerce agents with UCP", "publisher": "Shopify Developers", "url": "https://shopify.dev/docs/agents", "date": "2026-01-11" } ], "significance": "Enabling a catalog-exposing MCP endpoint by default across paid plans makes agent-readable storefronts the baseline for a large merchant base rather than an opt-in feature.", "trend": "advancing", "related": [ "ucp", "mcp", "mcp-servers", "microsoft", "shopify-ai-orders", "google", "swap", "channel3", "aws-agentic-shopping-assistant" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-shopify" }, { "id": "microsoft", "subject": "Microsoft", "tag": "Copilot Checkout", "fact": "Launched Copilot Checkout (2026-01-08) on Copilot.com, powered by PayPal with Stripe and Shopify; merchants remain merchant of record, Shopify merchants are auto-enrolled with an opt-out window, and launch retailers included Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, and Etsy sellers.", "asOf": "2026-01-08", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "PayPal Powers Microsoft’s Launch of Copilot Checkout", "publisher": "PayPal Newsroom", "url": "https://newsroom.paypal-corp.com/2026-01-08-PayPal-Powers-Microsofts-Launch-of-Copilot-Checkout", "date": "2026-01-08" }, { "title": "Microsoft Copilot Checkout launches with Shopify, PayPal, Etsy, Stripe", "publisher": "Axios", "url": "https://www.axios.com/2026/01/08/microsoft-ai-copilot-checkout", "date": "2026-01-08" } ], "significance": "Auto-enrolling Shopify merchants with an opt-out, while keeping them merchant of record, shows a checkout strategy built on partner rails rather than a self-operated transaction.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "Whether default opt-in enrollment of merchants becomes an accepted norm or draws merchant resistance is unsettled.", "related": [ "paypal-agentic", "stripe-acp", "shopify", "ucp" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-microsoft" }, { "id": "anthropic", "subject": "Anthropic", "tag": "Claude Marketplace", "fact": "Launched a B2B Claude Marketplace in limited preview (announced 2026-03-16) for enterprises to deploy third-party software built on Claude using existing spend; launch partners included Snowflake, GitLab, Harvey, Replit, and Lovable. Anthropic stated it does not currently plan to take a transaction commission.", "asOf": "2026-03-16", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Anthropic launches Claude B2B marketplace for AI applications", "publisher": "Digital Commerce 360", "url": "https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2026/03/16/anthropic-launches-claude-b2b-marketplace-enterprise-ai-applications/", "date": "2026-03-16" }, { "title": "Anthropic launches Claude Marketplace for business AI tools", "publisher": "PYMNTS", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/artificial-intelligence-2/2026/anthropic-marketplace-simplifies-ai-buying-for-enterprises/", "date": "2026-03-16" } ], "significance": "Anthropic’s relevance to agentic commerce is primarily as a core protocol and governance actor (MCP, the Agentic AI Foundation); its Claude Marketplace is B2B enterprise-software procurement, distinct from consumer agentic shopping.", "trend": "emerging", "contested": "Whether Anthropic sustains a no-commission posture as the marketplace scales is not yet determined.", "related": [ "aaif", "mcp", "openai", "anthropic-project-deal" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-anthropic" }, { "id": "perplexity", "subject": "Perplexity", "tag": "Instant Buy", "fact": "Offers a shopping experience with an \"Instant Buy\" / \"Buy with Pro\" feature for Pro subscribers, powered by a PayPal partnership launched ahead of Black Friday 2025; Perplexity funds free shipping and operates a zero-fee merchant program.", "asOf": "2025-11-19", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "PayPal and Perplexity Launch Instant Buy Ahead of Black Friday", "publisher": "PayPal Newsroom", "url": "https://newsroom.paypal-corp.com/2025-11-PayPal-and-Perplexity-Launch-Instant-Buy", "date": "2025-11-18" }, { "title": "Perplexity announces free product to streamline online shopping", "publisher": "CNBC", "url": "https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/19/perplexity-ai-online-shopping-paypal.html", "date": "2025-11-19" } ], "significance": "Funding free shipping and a zero-fee merchant program is a subsidy posture that differs from platforms passing transaction costs to merchants, even as litigation constrains its agent's access.", "trend": "contested", "contested": "Whether its Comet agent may access logged-in retailer pages without authorization is the live question before the Ninth Circuit.", "related": [ "paypal-agentic", "amazon-perplexity-injunction", "amazon-perplexity-appeal", "perplexity-oral-argument", "amazon" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-perplexity" }, { "id": "meta", "subject": "Meta", "tag": "Teased", "fact": "On Meta’s January 2026 earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg teased forthcoming agentic shopping tools that would surface products from Meta’s advertiser catalog. Meta has also been cited by some secondary sources as a co-developer of ACP, though the ACP specification lists only OpenAI and Stripe as Founding Maintainers.", "asOf": "2026-01-28", "verification": "developing", "sources": [ { "title": "Zuckerberg teases agentic commerce tools and major AI rollout in 2026", "publisher": "TechCrunch", "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/28/zuckerberg-teases-agentic-commerce-tools-and-major-ai-rollout-in-2026/", "date": "2026-01-28" } ], "context": "Described as forthcoming tools, not a shipped product, as of the source date.", "significance": "Limiting agentic shopping to products from its own advertiser catalog ties any commerce surface to its existing ad business rather than open merchant catalogs.", "trend": "emerging", "contested": "Whether Meta co-developed ACP is disputed: some secondary sources name it while the ACP specification lists only OpenAI and Stripe as Founding Maintainers.", "related": [ "acp", "openai", "stripe-acp" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-meta" }, { "id": "klarna-agentic-commerce", "subject": "Klarna", "fact": "On 2026-05-20 Klarna launched an AI Shopping Search app inside ChatGPT, powered by its Product Search MCP server connecting ChatGPT to live commerce data (100M+ products, 400M+ merchant listings across 13 markets); separately, on 2026-02-02 Klarna announced it is joining Google’s UCP, building on its earlier adoption of AP2.", "tag": "BNPL, multi-protocol", "asOf": "2026-05-20", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Klarna launches AI-powered Shopping Search app in ChatGPT", "publisher": "Klarna Group plc (Investor Relations)", "url": "https://investors.klarna.com/News--Events/news/news-details/2026/Klarna-launches-AI-powered-Shopping-Search-app-in-ChatGPT/default.aspx", "date": "2026-05-20" }, { "title": "Klarna Backs Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP)", "publisher": "Business Wire", "url": "https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260202720690/en/Klarna-Backs-Googles-Universal-Commerce-Protocol-UCP-to-Enable-Agentic-Commerce-Across-Platforms", "date": "2026-02-02" } ], "significance": "A major BNPL provider is positioning across both the OpenAI/MCP and Google/UCP agentic-commerce stacks rather than committing to a single ecosystem.", "trend": "advancing", "related": [ "mcp", "openai-apps-sdk", "ucp", "google", "stripe-acp" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-klarna-agentic-commerce" }, { "id": "rakuten-ai-ichiba", "subject": "Rakuten AI", "fact": "On 2026-01-05 Rakuten integrated an agentic AI tool, \"Rakuten AI,\" into the Rakuten Ichiba mobile app as an AI shopping concierge, letting users search by budget, purpose, and usage scenario via text, voice, or image across roughly 500 million items, supplemented by general web search.", "tag": "APAC marketplace agent", "asOf": "2026-01-05", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Rakuten Integrates Agentic AI Tool \"Rakuten AI\" into Rakuten Ichiba Mobile App", "publisher": "Rakuten Group, Inc.", "url": "https://global.rakuten.com/corp/news/press/2026/0105_02.html", "date": "2026-01-05" } ], "significance": "It shows agentic shopping assistants expanding beyond US platforms into a major APAC marketplace running its own first-party AI rather than the OpenAI or Google ecosystems.", "trend": "emerging", "related": [ "openai", "google" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-rakuten-ai-ichiba" }, { "id": "ulta-gemini-agentic", "subject": "Ulta Beauty", "tag": "platform-protocol", "fact": "Ulta Beauty is rolling out agentic commerce within Google AI Mode and the Gemini app (partnership reported April 2026), offering expansive AI product recommendations (e.g., 11-12 products broken into categories) and is among the retailers entering Google's agentic AI partnerships.", "asOf": "2026-04-15", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "Is agentic shopping the next big thing in beauty? Sephora and Ulta are betting yes", "publisher": "Glossy", "url": "https://www.glossy.co/beauty/is-agentic-shopping-the-next-big-thing-in-beauty-sephora-and-ulta-are-betting-yes/", "date": "2026-04-15" }, { "title": "AutoZone, Home Depot, Macy's, Ulta enter Google Agentic AI partnerships", "publisher": "Chain Store Age", "url": "https://chainstoreage.com/autozone-home-depot-macys-ulta-enter-google-agentic-ai-partnerships", "date": "2026-01-12" } ], "significance": "Beauty category entering agentic commerce, with Ulta favoring Google/Gemini breadth — a category test of whether high-consideration, attribute-rich purchases work through agents.", "trend": "emerging", "contested": "Details of shipped checkout depth are thin; framed as rollout/partnership rather than fully live autonomous purchase.", "related": [ "sephora-chatgpt-app" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-ulta-gemini-agentic" }, { "id": "sephora-chatgpt-app", "subject": "Sephora", "tag": "chatgpt-app", "fact": "Sephora shipped an app integration within ChatGPT (reported March 2026) featuring visual/photo-upload product recommendations and a deliberately succinct conversational style (responses limited to roughly three or four products). Sephora was also named among OpenAI Instant Checkout retailers reported in late 2025.", "asOf": "2026-04-15", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "Is agentic shopping the next big thing in beauty? Sephora and Ulta are betting yes", "publisher": "Glossy", "url": "https://www.glossy.co/beauty/is-agentic-shopping-the-next-big-thing-in-beauty-sephora-and-ulta-are-betting-yes/", "date": "2026-04-15" } ], "significance": "A leading beauty retailer building a tuned in-ChatGPT shopping experience with photo-based recommendation, contrasting with Ulta's Google/Gemini bet — a head-to-head of agent platforms within one category.", "trend": "emerging", "contested": "Instant Checkout inclusion is complicated by OpenAI's March 2026 retreat from native Instant Checkout toward merchant-hosted checkout.", "related": [ "ulta-gemini-agentic" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-sephora-chatgpt-app" }, { "id": "jd-jingyan", "subject": "JD.com", "tag": "first-party-agent", "fact": "JD.com runs Jingyan, an AI shopping assistant launched in 2023 that had accumulated more than 50 million users by May 2026, as part of China's broader push to put AI agents at the center of commerce super-apps.", "asOf": "2026-05-10", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "China leads the agentic commerce race as Alibaba, Meituan, and JD.com deploy AI shopping agents at scale", "publisher": "The Next Web", "url": "https://thenextweb.com/news/chinas-tech-giants-are-replacing-the-search-bar-with-ai-agents-that-shop-for-you", "date": "2026-05-10" } ], "significance": "Demonstrates that China's #2 e-commerce player has a multi-year, 50M-user head start on consumer shopping agents, deepening the regional gap with Western single-platform pilots.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "Source emphasizes scale over feature/checkout-autonomy specifics for Jingyan.", "related": [ "bytedance-doubao" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-jd-jingyan" }, { "id": "bytedance-doubao", "subject": "ByteDance (Doubao / Douyin)", "tag": "first-party-agent", "fact": "ByteDance upgraded its Doubao AI chatbot in December 2025 to autonomously handle tasks such as ticket bookings through Douyin (China's TikTok), part of Chinese super-apps turning chatbots into transacting agents.", "asOf": "2026-05-10", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "China leads the agentic commerce race as Alibaba, Meituan, and JD.com deploy AI shopping agents at scale", "publisher": "The Next Web", "url": "https://thenextweb.com/news/chinas-tech-giants-are-replacing-the-search-bar-with-ai-agents-that-shop-for-you", "date": "2026-05-10" }, { "title": "Chinese tech giants enter the 'agentic commerce' race as AI reshapes super apps", "publisher": "CNBC", "url": "https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/21/china-tech-ai-agentic-commerce-super-apps-alibaba-taobao-qwen-tencent-wechat-doubbao-weixin.html", "date": "2026-01-21" } ], "significance": "Shows agentic transacting extending into content/social commerce (Douyin), where the agent completes bookings inside the feed app rather than a separate retail surface.", "trend": "emerging", "contested": "Capability described at a high level; transaction scope and volumes not detailed.", "related": [ "jd-jingyan" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-bytedance-doubao" }, { "id": "zalando-assistant", "subject": "Zalando", "tag": "first-party-agent", "fact": "Zalando rolled out its OpenAI-powered Zalando Assistant across all 25 markets in local languages (Oct 1, 2024), enabling occasion/context-aware conversational discovery (e.g., weather/location-aware outfit queries) over its catalog. Zalando is also a named endorser of Google's UCP, putting its catalog on the path to agent-readable checkout.", "asOf": "2026-01-11", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Zalando brings its AI-powered assistant to all markets and adds four new cities to its Trend Spotter", "publisher": "Zalando Corporate", "url": "https://corporate.zalando.com/en/technology/zalando-brings-its-ai-powered-assistant-all-markets-and-adds-four-new-cities-its-trend", "date": "2024-09-30" }, { "title": "New tech and tools for retailers to succeed in an agentic shopping era", "publisher": "Google (The Keyword)", "url": "https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/agentic-commerce-ai-tools-protocol-retailers-platforms/", "date": "2026-01-11" } ], "significance": "Europe's largest fashion platform combines a shipped conversational shopping assistant with UCP endorsement — its agentic angle is the protocol commitment, since the assistant itself is discovery-only today.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "The first-party assistant is recommendation/discovery, not autonomous purchase; the agentic-transaction angle rests on UCP adoption rather than a live checkout agent.", "related": [ "ucp" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-zalando-assistant" }, { "id": "alibaba-qwen-taobao", "subject": "Alibaba (Qwen + Taobao)", "fact": "On May 10-11, 2026, Alibaba integrated its Qwen AI app with Taobao/Tmall, launching end-to-end agentic shopping: from inside Qwen a shopper can find a product across 4 billion+ items, compare sellers, run virtual try-ons, monitor a 30-day price track, and place an order, with the transaction completing through Alipay and the agent stepping back only for final user confirmation. Qwen reached ~300M MAU across Alibaba surfaces and logged ~140M first-time AI shopping experiences during Chinese New Year.", "tag": "agentic-commerce-launch", "asOf": "2026-05-11", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Alibaba integrates Qwen AI with Taobao for end-to-end agentic shopping", "publisher": "The Next Web", "url": "https://thenextweb.com/news/alibaba-integrates-qwen-ai-with-taobao", "date": "2026-05-11" }, { "title": "Alibaba to merge Qwen AI with Taobao in push for new AI-powered shopping", "publisher": "TechNode", "url": "https://technode.com/2026/05/11/alibaba-to-merge-qwen-ai-with-taobao-in-push-for-new-ai-powered-conversational-shopping-experience/", "date": "2026-05-11" } ], "significance": "First Western-or-Chinese hyperscaler to close the full discover-evaluate-pay loop natively inside a general AI assistant at marketplace scale; sets the agentic-commerce benchmark.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "Open question whether paid placements stay out of AI recommendations; monetization model unproven.", "related": [ "bytedance-doubao-douyin", "tencent-yuanbao-weixin" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-alibaba-qwen-taobao" }, { "id": "bytedance-doubao-douyin", "subject": "ByteDance (Doubao + Douyin)", "fact": "ByteDance closed its AI-shopping loop on Douyin: Doubao's first Douyin commerce integration began December 2025 (ticket bookings, select categories), in-app gray-scale shopping testing followed March 2026, and the full 'Help You Choose' closed-loop feature went live May 2026 — returning products with specs and direct links so a user can browse, pick a shop, and check out in roughly 30 seconds. Doubao had ~345M MAU in Q1 2026.", "tag": "agentic-commerce-launch", "asOf": "2026-05-15", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Qwen and Doubao closed China's AI shopping loop. Paid ranking is the next fight.", "publisher": "China Internet Watch", "url": "https://www.ciw.news/p/china-ai-shopping-2026", "date": "2026-05-15" }, { "title": "Chinese tech giants enter the 'agentic commerce' race as AI reshapes super apps", "publisher": "CNBC", "url": "https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/21/china-tech-ai-agentic-commerce-super-apps-alibaba-taobao-qwen-tencent-wechat-doubbao-weixin.html", "date": "2026-01-21" } ], "significance": "Doubao gives ByteDance the largest Chinese AI-assistant user base wired directly into Douyin commerce, the chief rival to Alibaba's closed loop.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "Paid-ranking neutrality in AI recommendations is the explicitly flagged next battleground.", "related": [ "alibaba-qwen-taobao", "tencent-yuanbao-weixin" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-bytedance-doubao-douyin" }, { "id": "tencent-yuanbao-weixin", "subject": "Tencent (Yuanbao / Weixin)", "fact": "Tencent is building agentic commerce into Weixin (WeChat, 1.4B+ MAU): on March 22, 2026 it integrated the open-source agent OpenClaw into WeChat via software called ClawBot, with President Martin Lau stating the goal of agents that leverage WeChat's mini-programs, commerce and payments. Tencent's Yuanbao assistant adds an agent service that operates autonomously inside Weixin mini-programs to complete actions like shopping or ordering; Tencent is more than doubling Yuanbao/HunYuan spend from RMB18B (2025) to >RMB36B (2026).", "tag": "agentic-commerce-developing", "asOf": "2026-03-25", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "Chinese tech giants enter the 'agentic commerce' race as AI reshapes super apps", "publisher": "CNBC", "url": "https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/21/china-tech-ai-agentic-commerce-super-apps-alibaba-taobao-qwen-tencent-wechat-doubbao-weixin.html", "date": "2026-01-21" }, { "title": "AI agent OpenClaw in WeChat: A super app becomes an AI platform", "publisher": "Xpert.Digital", "url": "https://xpert.digital/en/openclaw-in-wechat/", "date": "2026-03-25" } ], "significance": "WeChat's mini-program + WeChat Pay graph is the deepest commerce-plus-payments substrate of any messaging super app, making Tencent the third pillar of China's agentic-commerce race.", "trend": "emerging", "contested": "Execution timing and how much is shipped vs. announced remains unclear.", "related": [ "alibaba-qwen-taobao", "bytedance-doubao-douyin" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-tencent-yuanbao-weixin" }, { "id": "naver-shopping-agent", "subject": "Naver (Agent N / Shopping AI Agent)", "fact": "Naver launched its Shopping AI Agent 1.0 in beta in late February 2026 inside the Naver Plus Store app: instead of a product grid, the agent asks clarifying questions, infers context (e.g., a dog in the household → waterproof, scratch-resistant materials) and proposes specific products with discounts and ratings, as an early stage of 'agentic commerce, where AI handles everything from search to payment.' It will expand to cosmetics and food in 1H 2026 and to all commerce categories by December, adding cart functions; legacy Clova X and Q: are discontinued April 9, 2026.", "tag": "shopping-agent-launch", "asOf": "2026-04-18", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Naver Launches AI Shopping Agent in Platform Revenue Race", "publisher": "Seoul Economic Daily", "url": "https://en.sedaily.com/news/2026/02/27/naver-launches-ai-shopping-agent-in-platform-revenue-race", "date": "2026-02-27" }, { "title": "Naver's AI Shopping Agent Redefines E-Commerce Through Conversation", "publisher": "Seoul Economic Daily", "url": "https://en.sedaily.com/technology/2026/04/18/navers-ai-shopping-agent-redefines-e-commerce-through", "date": "2026-04-18" } ], "significance": "Korea's dominant commerce platform converts conversational discovery into its core shopping surface, with explicit roadmap to payment-inclusive agentic commerce.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "Full agent-completed payment is roadmap, not yet shipped; current beta is discover/evaluate.", "related": [ "kakao-kanana-agent" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-naver-shopping-agent" }, { "id": "kakao-kanana-agent", "subject": "Kakao (Kanana / KakaoTalk)", "fact": "Kakao plans an AI shopping agent rolling out from Q1 2026 that takes natural-language requests (e.g., 'a body lotion in a bigger size with a lighter texture than my last purchase'), searches across e-commerce platforms for matching products, and completes checkout; on March 9, 2026 it folds its existing AI shopping feature into the Kanana brand inside KakaoTalk. Kakao runs a two-track strategy — OpenAI for B2C LLM (ChatGPT for Kakao launched in KakaoTalk Oct 2025, ~50M users) and Google for device experience.", "tag": "shopping-agent-developing", "asOf": "2026-02-12", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "Naver, Kakao gear up for agentic AI era in 2026", "publisher": "Korea Times", "url": "https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/business/tech-science/20260102/naver-kakao-gear-up-for-agentic-ai-era-in-2026", "date": "2026-01-02" }, { "title": "Kakao Expands AI Alliances with Google, OpenAI to Accelerate Monetization", "publisher": "Seoul Economic Daily", "url": "https://en.sedaily.com/technology/2026/02/12/kakao-expands-ai-alliances-with-google-openai-to-accelerate", "date": "2026-02-12" } ], "significance": "Korea's dominant messaging app wiring cross-platform search-to-checkout into chat, backed by an OpenAI alliance — a messaging-native agentic commerce path distinct from Naver's marketplace-native one.", "trend": "emerging", "contested": "Checkout-completion capability is announced for Q1 2026 rollout; shipped scope not yet independently confirmed.", "related": [ "naver-shopping-agent" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-kakao-kanana-agent" }, { "id": "yandex-alice-market", "subject": "Yandex (Alice AI / Yandex Market)", "fact": "Yandex introduced Alice AI in October 2025 (35M+ monthly users across Station speakers and Auto), positioning it to gain AI agents that carry out user requests such as 'find a product at the best price' or book a restaurant table, tied to Yandex Market (~18.2M monthly shoppers, ~90.7K active sellers).", "tag": "shopping-agent-developing", "asOf": "2026-03-01", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "'Alice, what's new?' — Yandex introduces Alice AI", "publisher": "Yandex", "url": "https://yandex.com/company/news/2025-10-28-01", "date": "2025-10-28" }, { "title": "Tech Report on Alice AI: How We Built the Next Generation of Russia's Most Popular AI Assistant", "publisher": "Yandex / Medium", "url": "https://medium.com/yandex/tech-report-on-alice-ai-how-we-built-the-next-generation-of-russias-most-popular-ai-assistant-6991e2a1fcfa", "date": "2026-03-01" } ], "significance": "Russia's dominant assistant + marketplace pairing positions Yandex to localize agentic commerce within a sanctioned, walled market where Western agents don't operate.", "trend": "emerging", "contested": "Product-finding agent framed as forthcoming ('will soon feature'); not yet a confirmed transacting agent.", "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-yandex-alice-market" }, { "id": "samsung-bixby-perplexity", "subject": "Samsung (Bixby + Perplexity)", "fact": "Samsung rebooted Bixby as a conversational AI agent in One UI 8.5 (announced Feb 2026, rolling to Galaxy S26 first), with real-time web search powered by a Perplexity integration. Perplexity's integration into Bixby landed about a month after Perplexity launched its free shopping agentic tool that detects shopping intent, and Samsung added Perplexity alongside Gemini and Bixby to Galaxy AI (Feb 23, 2026) as a multi-agent shopping/search entry point on the device.", "tag": "assistant-commerce-surface", "asOf": "2026-02-23", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Samsung Introduces the New Bixby in One UI 8.5", "publisher": "Samsung Newsroom", "url": "https://news.samsung.com/us/samsung-introduces-new-bixby-one-ui-8-5", "date": "2026-02-23" }, { "title": "Samsung adds AI agent Perplexity to Galaxy AI, joining Gemini and Bixby", "publisher": "Gigazine", "url": "https://gigazine.net/gsc_news/en/20260223-samsung-add-perplexity-galaxy-ai/", "date": "2026-02-23" } ], "significance": "Brings Perplexity's shopping-intent agent to Samsung's billion-device install base as a default on-device surface, distributing agentic commerce through hardware rather than an app.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "Bixby itself surfaces commerce via Perplexity rather than completing purchases natively; checkout depth on-device unclear.", "related": [ "perplexity" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-samsung-bixby-perplexity" }, { "id": "tiktok-tako", "subject": "TikTok (Tako + AI agent infrastructure)", "fact": "TikTok's Tako AI assistant surfaces products, creators and content from natural-language queries inside the app and in 2026 reshapes TikTok Shop discovery (ranking on product-feed completeness, creator endorsement density, comment sentiment, entity recognition). At TikTok World 2026 TikTok launched an MCP-style server letting AI agents plan, launch and optimize ad campaigns end to end, and expanded chatbot/Seller Assistant tools across TikTok Shop.", "tag": "discovery-agent-and-infra", "asOf": "2026-04-01", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "TikTok Shop Rolls Out New Tools Including Expanded Chatbot Access", "publisher": "Social Media Today", "url": "https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/tiktok-shop-rolls-out-new-tools-including-expanded-chatbot-access/812401/", "date": "2026-01-19" }, { "title": "TikTok introduces AI agent infrastructure and new ad formats at TikTok World 2026", "publisher": "Mobile Marketing Reads", "url": "https://www.mobilemarketingreads.com/tiktok-introduces-ai-agent-infrastructure-and-new-ad-formats-at-tiktok-world-2026/", "date": "2026-04-01" } ], "significance": "Tako becomes a product-discovery ranking layer for TikTok Shop (a new GEO surface for merchants), while TikTok exposes agent infrastructure on the ad/seller side.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "Tako is discovery/recommendation, not agent-completed checkout; consumer purchase remains tap-through to TikTok Shop.", "related": [ "pinterest-assistant" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-tiktok-tako" }, { "id": "pinterest-assistant", "subject": "Pinterest (Pinterest Assistant)", "fact": "Pinterest launched Pinterest Assistant in beta on October 30, 2025 (US, 18+), accepting voice, text and visual input to deliver personalized shoppable recommendations from its Taste-graph, with a generative retrieval model on search. CEO Bill Ready says fully autonomous agentic shopping is 'still years away' and the focus is assisting, not replacing, the shopper.", "tag": "shopping-assistant-launch", "asOf": "2025-11-04", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Pinterest introduces AI-powered Assistant for online shopping discovery", "publisher": "Digital Commerce 360", "url": "https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2025/11/04/pinterest-introduces-ai-powered-assistant-for-online-shopping-discovery/", "date": "2025-11-04" }, { "title": "Pinterest has 'effectively become an AI-enabled shopping assistant,' CEO says", "publisher": "Customer Experience Dive", "url": "https://www.customerexperiencedive.com/news/pinterest-ai-shopping-assistant-ceo-q2/757227/", "date": "2025-08-01" } ], "significance": "A major visual-discovery platform formalizes an AI shopping-assistant surface, while explicitly drawing the line short of agent-completed purchases — a notable counter-narrative to the full-autonomy hype.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "Pinterest's CEO explicitly frames full agentic checkout as years away; assistant is discover/evaluate only.", "related": [ "tiktok-tako" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-pinterest-assistant" }, { "id": "baidu-merchant-agent", "subject": "Baidu (Ernie / Merchant Agent)", "fact": "In 2026 Baidu introduced a Merchant Agent (商家智能体) built on ERNIE 5.0 (released Jan 22, 2026) that turns brand pages into 24/7 sales floors — AI agents qualify leads, handle cross-border inquiries in real time, and close 'search-to-purchase' loops via text and voice; Baidu also adopted Daily Active Agents (DAA) as a core metric and expanded Yijing digital-human commerce livestreaming in 12 languages.", "tag": "merchant-side-agent", "asOf": "2026-02-15", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "Baidu Unveils ERNIE 5.0 and a Series of AI Applications at Baidu World 2025", "publisher": "PR Newswire", "url": "https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/baidu-unveils-ernie-5-0-and-a-series-of-ai-applications-at-baidu-world-2025--ramps-up-global-push-302614531.html", "date": "2025-11-13" }, { "title": "Baidu Advances Agent Portfolio to Embrace the Agent Era, Champions Daily Active Agents as Key Metric", "publisher": "PR Newswire", "url": "https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/baidu-advances-agent-portfolio-to-embrace-the-agent-era-champions-daily-active-agents-as-key-metric-302771383.html", "date": "2026-02-15" } ], "significance": "Baidu's posture is merchant-side (search-to-purchase agents on brand pages) rather than a consumer shopping assistant, contrasting with Alibaba/ByteDance consumer agents — a different bet on where AI commerce value sits.", "trend": "emerging", "contested": "Posture is merchant-facing search-to-purchase, not a consumer agent completing third-party checkouts.", "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-baidu-merchant-agent" }, { "id": "ebay-unified-agentic", "subject": "eBay", "fact": "eBay built a 'unified agentic commerce platform' integrating its hybrid cloud, in-house hyper-optimized shopping LLMs, a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server and other agentic protocols over a proprietary data layer, enabling a connected experience between eBay's own agents and third-party agents 'from companies like OpenAI.' eBay shipped a first-party AI shopping agent offering personalized product picks and is testing agentic experiences across search and shopping.", "tag": "platform-protocol", "asOf": "2025-10-31", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "eBay invests in agentic AI for shopping, tests experiences from companies like OpenAI", "publisher": "Digital Commerce 360", "url": "https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2025/10/31/ebay-agentic-ai-commerce-openai/", "date": "2025-10-31" } ], "significance": "A 30-year marketplace exposing catalog/transaction signals to external agents via MCP while running its own agent — a template for marketplaces that want to be agent-readable rather than disintermediated.", "trend": "advancing", "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-ebay-unified-agentic" }, { "id": "mercadolibre-agents", "subject": "Mercado Libre", "fact": "Mercado Libre is building in-house agents for agentic commerce across its ecosystem. Its consumer/Mercado Pago AI assistant handled more than 9 million conversations in 4Q25, resolving 87% without human support; a seller assistant now touches ~20% of GMV; and AI-driven ad tooling lifted Mercado Ads revenue 67% (FX-neutral) in 4Q25. The company has also shipped a Mercado Libre MCP server enabling agentic/natural-language seller integrations.", "tag": "first-party-agent", "asOf": "2026-02-26", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "MercadoLibre Inc (MELI) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Highlights", "publisher": "Yahoo Finance / GuruFocus", "url": "https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mercadolibre-inc-meli-q4-2025-050131605.html", "date": "2026-02-26" }, { "title": "Boosting Store Integration: MCP and Agentic IDEs for Mercado Libre Listings", "publisher": "Mercado Libre Tech (Medium)", "url": "https://medium.com/mercadolibre-tech/boosting-store-integration-mcp-and-agentic-ides-for-mercado-libre-listings-6bf616a914f2", "date": "2026-01-15" } ], "significance": "LATAM's dominant marketplace+fintech is building proprietary agents end-to-end (consumer, seller, ads, fintech) rather than plugging into US LLM platforms, and exposes an MCP server for agent-built integrations.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "Consumer-facing autonomous-purchase agent is still in development; shipped pieces are assistant/seller/ads, not full agent checkout.", "related": [ "ebay-unified-agentic" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-mercadolibre-agents" }, { "id": "target-chatgpt-app", "subject": "Target", "fact": "Target launched a shopping app on OpenAI's ChatGPT in beta the week of Thanksgiving 2025, offering a complete shopping experience: buying multiple items in a single transaction, shopping fresh food, and selecting omnichannel fulfillment (Drive Up, pickup). Target is also a co-developer/partner of Google's Universal Commerce Protocol and joined ChatGPT's ads pilot (Feb 2026) alongside Albertsons and Williams-Sonoma.", "tag": "chatgpt-app", "asOf": "2026-03-04", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Target details approach toward agentic commerce in early 2026", "publisher": "Digital Commerce 360", "url": "https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2026/03/04/target-approach-toward-agentic-commerce-2026/", "date": "2026-03-04" }, { "title": "New tech and tools for retailers to succeed in an agentic shopping era", "publisher": "Google (The Keyword)", "url": "https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/agentic-commerce-ai-tools-protocol-retailers-platforms/", "date": "2026-01-11" } ], "significance": "A top US big-box retailer shipping a full multi-item + omnichannel-fulfillment shopping app inside ChatGPT — beyond single-item Instant Checkout — and hedging across both the OpenAI and Google agentic stacks.", "trend": "advancing", "related": [ "ucp" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-target-chatgpt-app" }, { "id": "wayfair-agentic", "subject": "Wayfair", "fact": "Wayfair co-developed Google's UCP and adopted it so its products appear with agentic checkout in Google AI Mode and the Gemini app, and is pursuing a multi-platform ('be everywhere') strategy with integrations/partnerships across OpenAI/ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google, alongside a first-party AI approach. Internal generative/agentic AI is used for catalog translation and PDP localization.", "tag": "platform-protocol", "asOf": "2026-05-05", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Wayfair wants 'to be everywhere' when it comes to agentic AI", "publisher": "Digital Commerce 360", "url": "https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2026/05/05/wayfair-agentic-ai-commerce/", "date": "2026-05-05" }, { "title": "Wayfair signs on to use Google's Universal Commerce Protocol", "publisher": "Digital Commerce 360", "url": "https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2026/01/14/wayfair-google-universal-commerce-protocol/", "date": "2026-01-14" } ], "significance": "A large US home-goods retailer betting on protocol-level agent-readability across every major agent rather than a single platform, and one of the few named UCP co-developers outside Shopify/Google.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "Reporting indicates internal/operational agentic AI is further along than a shipped consumer-facing first-party purchase agent.", "related": [ "ucp", "target-chatgpt-app" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-wayfair-agentic" } ], "stateOfPlay": "The AI-shopping platform race is now global, spanning US players (OpenAI, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, eBay, Target, Wayfair), Chinese super-apps (Alibaba-Qwen/Taobao, ByteDance-Doubao/Douyin, Tencent-Weixin, Baidu, JD), Korean platforms (Naver, Kakao), Japan (Rakuten), and Latin America (Mercado Libre), with postures diverging on who owns checkout and Western pilots clustering around two protocol camps — OpenAI/Stripe’s ACP and the Google/Shopify UCP.", "highlights": [ "The US field is broad — OpenAI (shifted to discovery, routing purchases to merchant-owned checkout), Google (Universal Cart across Search, Gemini, YouTube, Gmail), Amazon (Alexa for Shopping with \"Buy for Me\"), Microsoft (Copilot Checkout), Anthropic (B2B Claude Marketplace), Perplexity (Instant Buy), eBay, Target (full multi-item ChatGPT app), and Wayfair.", "China has closed the full discover-evaluate-pay loop at scale: Alibaba integrated Qwen with Taobao/Tmall over 4B+ items (~300M MAU), ByteDance shipped Doubao’s \"Help You Choose\" on Douyin (~345M MAU), and Tencent (Weixin, 1.4B+ MAU), Baidu, and JD (Jingyan, 50M+ users) are all in.", "Platforms diverge on who owns checkout: OpenAI and Microsoft route to merchant-owned flows, Alibaba/Taobao and Amazon complete purchases directly, and Amazon completes them on third-party retailer sites — even as it litigates against rival agent access.", "Players hedge across stacks and beyond the US ecosystems — Korea’s Naver and Kakao, Samsung (Perplexity on Galaxy AI), and beauty (Ulta on Google/Gemini vs Sephora in ChatGPT) and fashion (Zalando, on UCP) are entering; in China, whether paid placements stay out of AI recommendations is the explicitly flagged unresolved question." ] }, { "id": "merchant-tooling", "title": "Merchant tooling & infrastructure", "intro": "The layer that makes a merchant’s catalog and storefront readable and transactable by agents — product databases, storefront generators, commerce operating systems, and retailer toolkits. It sits between the protocols and the consumer platforms.", "stateOfPlay": "A distinct vendor layer is forming to make catalogs agent-ready, spanning startups (Channel3, Spangle, Swap, Rye), enterprise platforms exposing their transactional stacks via MCP (Adobe Commerce, SAP Commerce Cloud, Salesforce Agentforce), and search/discovery and personalization incumbents shipping MCP servers (Coveo, Algolia, Zoovu, Nosto, Bloomreach) plus catalog-enrichment vendors (Feedonomics, Lily AI).", "entries": [ { "id": "channel3", "subject": "Channel3", "tag": "Product database", "fact": "Builds a real-time, agent-accessible product database (stated 50M products) for AI agents and merchants. Raised a $6M seed (led by Matrix; Paul Graham and others).", "asOf": "2025-12-10", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Channel3 secures $6M seed to build infrastructure behind agentic commerce", "publisher": "PR Newswire", "url": "https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/channel3-secures-6m-seed-funding-to-build-the-infrastructure-behind-agentic-commerce-302637193.html", "date": "2025-12-10" }, { "title": "Channel3 raises $6M to make every product on the web discoverable by AI agents", "publisher": "SiliconANGLE", "url": "https://siliconangle.com/2025/12/10/channel3-raises-6m-make-every-single-product-sold-web-discoverable-ai-agents/", "date": "2025-12-10" } ], "significance": "Channel3 builds a real-time, agent-accessible product database, addressing the catalog-discoverability layer agents need to find and compare products across merchants.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "The stated 50M-product scale is self-reported and not independently verified.", "related": [ "spangle", "mcp-servers", "shopify" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-channel3" }, { "id": "spangle", "subject": "Spangle AI", "tag": "Storefront generation", "fact": "Builds a commerce AI reasoning engine that generates custom storefronts — a merchant-side layer for making catalogs navigable by agents. Founded 2024; raised a $15M Series A (led by NewRoad Capital Partners) to about $21M total, citing customers including Revolve and Steve Madden.", "asOf": "2026-01-08", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Spangle AI raises $15 million for agentic infrastructure", "publisher": "Digital Commerce 360", "url": "https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2026/01/08/spangle-ai-15-million-funding-agentic-infrastructure/", "date": "2026-01-08" }, { "title": "Former Amazon execs raise $15M for agentic commerce startup", "publisher": "GeekWire", "url": "https://www.geekwire.com/2026/former-amazon-execs-raise-15m-for-agentic-commerce-startup-that-uses-ai-to-generate-custom-storefronts/", "date": "2026-01-07" } ], "significance": "Spangle builds a commerce AI reasoning engine that generates custom storefronts, a merchant-side layer for making catalogs navigable by agents.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "Named customers (Revolve, Steve Madden) are vendor-stated and the deployment scope is undisclosed.", "related": [ "swap", "channel3", "aws-agentic-shopping-assistant" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-spangle" }, { "id": "swap", "subject": "Swap", "tag": "Commerce OS", "fact": "Builds a commerce operating system for brands — the storefront layer agents transact against. Founded 2022 in New York; raised a $100M Series C (co-led by DST Global and ICONIQ) in January 2026, about six months after a $40M Series B, bringing total funding to $149M.", "asOf": "2026-01-07", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Shopify competitor Swap raises $100M six months after raising $40M", "publisher": "TechCrunch", "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/07/shopify-competitor-swap-raises-100m-six-months-after-raising-40m/", "date": "2026-01-07" }, { "title": "Swap Secures $100 Million Series C Funding", "publisher": "Business Wire", "url": "https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260107934395/en/Swap-Secures-$100-Million-Series-C-Funding-Strengthens-Position-as-Leading-Commerce-Solutions-Platform", "date": "2026-01-07" } ], "significance": "Swap builds a commerce operating system for brands, positioning it among the merchant-side platforms competing to own the storefront agents will transact against.", "trend": "advancing", "related": [ "shopify", "spangle" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-swap" }, { "id": "aws-agentic-shopping-assistant", "subject": "AWS — Agentic Shopping Assistant", "tag": "Retailer toolkit", "fact": "On 2026-05-27 AWS announced the AWS Agentic Shopping Assistant, letting third-party retailers build their own AI shopping experiences on their storefronts, catalogs, and branding (packaging architecture and learnings from Alexa for Shopping). Kate Spade (Tapestry) is named as the first public customer.", "asOf": "2026-05-27", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Amazon offers its AI shopping tech to outside retailers", "publisher": "GeekWire", "url": "https://www.geekwire.com/2026/amazon-offers-its-ai-shopping-tech-to-outside-retailers-in-new-phase-of-agentic-commerce-race/", "date": "2026-05-27" }, { "title": "Amazon launches AI shopping tools for outside retailers", "publisher": "Tech Startups", "url": "https://techstartups.com/2026/05/27/amazon-launches-ai-shopping-tools-for-outside-retailers-as-agentic-commerce-battle-heats-up/", "date": "2026-05-27" } ], "context": "A B2B/AWS offering for outside retailers, distinct from the consumer Alexa for Shopping launch (2026-05-13).", "significance": "Repackaging the consumer Alexa shopping stack as a toolkit for outside retailers positions Amazon to supply infrastructure to the same merchants its consumer agent shops across.", "trend": "emerging", "contested": "How retailers weigh adopting Amazon-supplied shopping infrastructure against ceding capability to a competitor is unresolved.", "related": [ "amazon", "aws-agentcore-payments", "ag-ui", "shopify" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-aws-agentic-shopping-assistant" }, { "id": "salesforce-agentforce-commerce", "subject": "Salesforce Agentforce Commerce", "fact": "Salesforce launched Agentforce Commerce (a rebrand of Commerce Cloud) in November 2025 for selling across AI channels, and at NRF 2026 (2026-01-10) expanded it with agentic merchandising, contextual search, guided shopping, and two-way email/SMS/WhatsApp agents.", "tag": "Enterprise commerce platform", "asOf": "2026-01-10", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Salesforce Launches Agentforce Commerce as AI Shopping Traffic Jumps 119%", "publisher": "Futurum Group", "url": "https://futurumgroup.com/insights/salesforce-launches-agentforce-commerce-as-ai-shopping-traffic-jumps-119/", "date": "2025-11-17" }, { "title": "E-commerce AI the focus of Salesforce Agentforce updates", "publisher": "TechTarget", "url": "https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/news/366637193/E-commerce-AI-the-focus-of-Salesforce-Agentforce-updates", "date": "2026-01-10" } ], "significance": "A major CRM and commerce incumbent is repositioning its commerce stack around agents, integrating partners including Stripe and Google’s AP2.", "trend": "advancing", "related": [ "shopify", "stripe-acp", "ap2", "salesforce-cimulate-acquisition" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-salesforce-agentforce-commerce" }, { "id": "bloomreach-loomi-connect", "subject": "Bloomreach (Loomi Connect / Loomi AI)", "fact": "Bloomreach's Loomi Connect makes its ecommerce product-discovery technology available through the Model Context Protocol, extending merchant search intelligence into platforms such as ChatGPT; it sits within the Loomi AI agentic platform (conversational shopping, marketing agents) that helped drive Bloomreach past $260M ARR, with a conversational shopping agent seeing a 113% holiday engagement increase.", "tag": "search-discovery", "asOf": "2026-02-24", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Bloomreach Surpasses $260 Million in ARR, Fueled by Adoption of Loomi AI Agentic Platform", "publisher": "Business Wire", "url": "https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260224592115/en/Bloomreach-Surpasses-$260-Million-in-Annual-Recurring-Revenue-Fueled-by-Adoption-of-Loomi-AI-Agentic-Platform", "date": "2026-02-24" }, { "title": "Bloomreach Unveils the Features Ushering in the Agentic Era of Marketing and Ecommerce", "publisher": "Bloomreach", "url": "https://www.bloomreach.com/en/news/2025/bloomreach-unveils-the-features-ushering-in-the-agentic-era-of-marketing-and-ecommerce/", "date": "2025-05-06" } ], "significance": "Personalization/discovery incumbent piping merchant catalog intelligence into external assistants via MCP, with disclosed ARR/engagement traction.", "trend": "advancing", "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-bloomreach-loomi-connect" }, { "id": "adobe-commerce-mcp", "subject": "Adobe Commerce (Commerce MCP Server)", "fact": "At Adobe Summit 2026 (Apr 2026), Adobe shipped a Commerce MCP server giving agents secure real-time access to catalog, cart, pricing, inventory, promotions, checkout, order management and post-purchase flows, enabling merchants to build their own shopping/voice/upsell agents or connect third-party assistants like ChatGPT and Perplexity; Adobe also rebranded Experience Cloud as agent-native CX Enterprise.", "tag": "headless-mcp", "asOf": "2026-04-22", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Reduce time-to-value with agentic upgrades in Adobe Commerce", "publisher": "Adobe Business", "url": "https://business.adobe.com/blog/adobe-commerce-summit-announcements", "date": "2026-04-20" }, { "title": "Adobe Just Made MCP the Default Agent Protocol for Commerce", "publisher": "Paz.ai", "url": "https://www.paz.ai/blog/adobe-mcp-commerce-default-agent-protocol", "date": "2026-04-22" } ], "significance": "An enterprise commerce platform making its full transactional stack agent-readable via MCP — a strong signal MCP is becoming the default agentic-commerce integration layer.", "trend": "advancing", "related": [ "sap-commerce-mcp" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-adobe-commerce-mcp" }, { "id": "sap-commerce-mcp", "subject": "SAP Commerce Cloud (Storefront MCP Server)", "fact": "SAP detailed a storefront Model Context Protocol server for SAP Commerce Cloud, planned for Q2 2026, to enable 'channel-less commerce' — letting merchants safely engage multiple AI agents (own-experience or third-party like ChatGPT/Perplexity) to surface products and enable buying for people and machines, as a first step toward supporting MCP, ACP, UCP and other agentic protocols.", "tag": "headless-mcp", "asOf": "2026-01-01", "verification": "developing", "sources": [ { "title": "Agentic AI Is Reshaping Commerce: The Next Frontier of Discovery, Payments, and Trust", "publisher": "SAP News", "url": "https://news.sap.com/2026/01/agentic-ai-reshaping-commerce-discovery-payments-trust/", "date": "2026-01-01" } ], "significance": "Major commerce platform signaling agent-readable storefronts and multi-protocol support; not yet GA, so future-dated.", "trend": "emerging", "contested": "Announced as planned for Q2 2026; general availability not yet confirmed as of this entry.", "related": [ "adobe-commerce-mcp" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-sap-commerce-mcp" }, { "id": "gorgias-ai-agent-2", "subject": "Gorgias (AI Agent 2.0 / Shopping Assistant)", "fact": "In July 2025 Gorgias launched AI Agent 2.0 with two skillsets — a Shopping Assistant handling pre-purchase recommendations, upsells and discounts, and a Support Agent for post-sale order tracking/returns/subscriptions — claiming up to 2.5x conversion increase from support chat and 20% more revenue per visitor, across 15,000+ ecommerce brands.", "tag": "conversational-commerce", "asOf": "2026-06-01", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "Gorgias | The only AI Agent built for ecommerce", "publisher": "Gorgias", "url": "https://www.gorgias.com/ai-agent", "date": "2026-06-01" }, { "title": "A complete guide to Gorgias AI Agent 2.0: What changed", "publisher": "eesel AI", "url": "https://www.eesel.ai/blog/gorgias-ai-agent-2-0-what-changed-in-2025", "date": "2026-01-01" } ], "significance": "CX-commerce vendor folding shopper-facing sales/recommendation behavior into its support agent, blurring support and conversational-commerce agents.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "Conversion/revenue uplift figures are vendor-reported.", "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-gorgias-ai-agent-2" }, { "id": "rye-universal-checkout", "subject": "Rye (Universal Checkout API)", "fact": "Rye repositioned to power agentic commerce with a Universal Checkout API (V2) that lets AI agents complete purchases at any online store from just a product URL plus payment token — returning true landed costs and completing orders in under 5 seconds at 99.9% reliability across 15,000+ merchants — using browser automation, cached deterministic workflows, and a fraud-mitigation proxy layer, plus a Universal Cart spanning merchants via UCP.", "tag": "agentic-checkout", "asOf": "2026-06-01", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "A Fresh Direction for Rye: Now Powering AI Shopping and Agentic Commerce", "publisher": "Rye", "url": "https://rye.com/blog/a-fresh-direction-for-rye-now-powering-ai-shopping-agentic-commerce", "date": "2026-06-01" }, { "title": "How We Solved Universal Checkout for Agentic Commerce", "publisher": "Rye", "url": "https://rye.com/blog/whitepaper-universal-checkout-api-agentic-commerce", "date": "2026-06-01" } ], "significance": "Targets the long tail of merchants without ACP/UCP support, letting agents transact even where catalogs aren't natively agent-ready — an alternative path to merchant participation.", "trend": "emerging", "contested": "Reliability/coverage metrics are vendor-reported; browser-automation checkout against unconsenting merchants raises fraud-detection and ToS questions.", "related": [ "crossmint" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-rye-universal-checkout" }, { "id": "nosto-huginn", "subject": "Nosto (Huginn)", "tag": "conversational-commerce", "fact": "On Oct 9, 2025, Nosto launched Huginn, a network of purpose-built commerce AI agents (Ask Huginn insights, AI Reveals, shopping assistants) built on its proprietary Large Intent Model. Huginn Connect exposes Nosto's product-discovery intelligence to external LLMs (e.g. Claude) and apps like Klaviyo and Shopify Sidekick via Nosto's MCP server.", "asOf": "2025-10-09", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "Nosto launches Huginn – the AI agent for commerce", "publisher": "Nosto", "url": "https://www.nosto.com/blog/agentic-ai-commerce/", "date": "2025-10-09" } ], "significance": "A personalization vendor turning its intent model into an MCP-accessible agent layer, making merchant catalog/behavioral data consumable by third-party agents.", "trend": "advancing", "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-nosto-huginn" }, { "id": "zoovu-mcp-server", "subject": "Zoovu (MCP Server)", "tag": "agent-readiness", "fact": "On Dec 11, 2025, Zoovu launched the Zoovu MCP Server, giving any MCP-compatible AI agent governed access to enriched, standardized product data plus compatibility/configuration logic so agents return rules-aware, verifiable product guidance grounded in one source of product truth (SOC 2 Type II, GDPR).", "asOf": "2025-12-11", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Zoovu Launches MCP Server to Give AI Agents the Product Intelligence Required for Agentic Commerce", "publisher": "Business Wire", "url": "https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251211046138/en/Zoovu-Launches-MCP-Server-to-Give-AI-Agents-the-Product-Intelligence-Required-for-Agentic-Commerce", "date": "2025-12-11" }, { "title": "Agentic AI in Ecommerce Examples: How Zoovu Is Building the Infrastructure for What's Next", "publisher": "Zoovu", "url": "https://zoovu.com/blog/agentic-ai-in-ecommerce-examples", "date": "2025-12-11" } ], "significance": "Guided-selling vendor repositioning its product-configuration engine as an agent-facing product-intelligence layer with enforced compatibility rules.", "trend": "advancing", "related": [ "coveo-mcp-server" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-zoovu-mcp-server" }, { "id": "feedonomics-ace", "subject": "Feedonomics (Agentic Catalog Exports)", "tag": "feed-catalog", "fact": "On Apr 27, 2026, Feedonomics (a Commerce/BigCommerce company) launched Agentic Catalog Exports (ACE), an enterprise service that optimizes and syndicates merchant product catalogs to agentic-discovery surfaces including OpenAI/ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, PayPal, Stripe, Perplexity and Amazon without per-channel custom integrations. Dell prepared ~7,000 products through ACE.", "asOf": "2026-04-27", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Feedonomics Unlocks Agentic Discovery with Agentic Catalog Exports", "publisher": "GlobeNewswire", "url": "https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/04/27/3281578/0/en/feedonomics-unlocks-agentic-discovery-with-agentic-catalog-exports.html", "date": "2026-04-27" }, { "title": "Feedonomics Unlocks Agentic Discovery with Agentic Catalog Exports", "publisher": "BigCommerce Investors", "url": "https://investors.bigcommerce.com/news-releases/news-release-details/feedonomics-unlocks-agentic-discovery-agentic-catalog-exports", "date": "2026-04-27" } ], "significance": "Established feed-management vendor pivoting from ad/search feeds to structured agent-ready catalog exports as a managed multi-surface service.", "trend": "emerging", "related": [ "lily-ai-attributes" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-feedonomics-ace" }, { "id": "lily-ai-attributes", "subject": "Lily AI (Product Attributes)", "tag": "agent-readiness", "fact": "Lily AI optimizes merchant product content for AI-agent and generative-engine discoverability, using a 25k+ customer-oriented attribute taxonomy, image/clickstream-derived enrichment and synonym mapping, and launched a solution to optimize product content for algorithmic and generative engine discoverability (GEO/AEO/agentic search), per its Winter 2025 release.", "asOf": "2025-01-08", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "Lily AI Launches the Winter 2025 Release of its AI-powered Product Attributes Platform", "publisher": "GlobeNewswire", "url": "https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2025/01/08/3006628/0/en/Lily-AI-Launches-the-Winter-2025-Release-of-its-AI-powered-Product-Attributes-Platform.html", "date": "2025-01-08" } ], "significance": "Attribute-enrichment vendor explicitly reframing its taxonomy as the layer that makes catalogs interpretable to intent-driven shopping agents.", "trend": "advancing", "related": [ "feedonomics-ace" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-lily-ai-attributes" }, { "id": "coveo-mcp-server", "subject": "Coveo (Hosted MCP Server)", "tag": "search-discovery", "fact": "On Feb 10, 2026, Coveo announced the generally available Coveo Hosted MCP Server, letting AI agents connect directly to Coveo's unified content/commerce index (search, product discovery) without custom integrations, with support for ChatGPT Enterprise (via an Apps & Connectors app) and Anthropic's Claude; 10 early customers were already using it.", "asOf": "2026-02-10", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "Coveo Announces Hosted MCP Server to Expand Enterprise AI and Agentic Partner Ecosystem", "publisher": "PR Newswire", "url": "https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/coveo-announces-hosted-mcp-server-to-expand-enterprise-ai-and-agentic-partner-ecosystem-302683287.html", "date": "2026-02-10" } ], "significance": "Enterprise search/discovery leader exposing its relevance index as a hosted MCP endpoint, a template for incumbents making catalogs agent-readable.", "trend": "advancing", "related": [ "algolia-agent-studio", "zoovu-mcp-server" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-coveo-mcp-server" }, { "id": "algolia-agent-studio", "subject": "Algolia (Agent Studio)", "tag": "search-discovery", "fact": "On Jan 30, 2026, Algolia launched Agent Studio (available via the Algolia dashboard), turning the search bar into a unified agentic search/discovery experience combining hybrid/vector/keyword retrieval, rules and personalization, with enterprise guardrails (GDPR, hallucination prevention, per-conversation cost limits) and native Model Context Protocol alignment for model-agnostic tool/context orchestration.", "asOf": "2026-01-30", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "Algolia Introduces Agent Studio to Power Highly-Scalable, Agentic Search Experiences", "publisher": "Algolia", "url": "https://www.algolia.com/about/news/algolia-introduces-agent-studio-to-power-highly-scalable-agentic-search-experiences", "date": "2026-01-30" } ], "significance": "Major search vendor productizing agentic search/RAG over merchant catalogs with MCP interop, signaling search bars converging into shopping agents.", "trend": "advancing", "related": [ "coveo-mcp-server" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-algolia-agent-studio" } ], "highlights": [ "Startups span the catalog-to-checkout chain — Channel3’s product database (self-reported 50M products), Spangle’s storefront generator (~$21M raised), Swap’s commerce OS ($149M total), and Rye’s Universal Checkout API targeting merchants without native ACP/UCP support.", "MCP is becoming the default integration layer: Adobe Commerce, SAP Commerce Cloud (planned Q2 2026), Coveo, Algolia, Zoovu, Nosto, and Bloomreach (Loomi Connect) all expose catalog or transactional capabilities to agents via MCP servers.", "Incumbents are entering — AWS packaged its Alexa for Shopping stack for outside retailers (Kate Spade as first customer), and Salesforce rebranded Commerce Cloud as Agentforce Commerce and acquired Cimulate.", "A catalog-readiness sub-layer is forming — Feedonomics’ Agentic Catalog Exports syndicate to ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, PayPal, Perplexity, and Amazon (Dell prepared ~7,000 products), and Lily AI’s 25k+-attribute taxonomy reframes product content for generative-engine discoverability." ] }, { "id": "governance", "title": "Standards governance", "intro": "Who controls the standards. A recurring 2026 pattern: protocols originated by a single vendor are being contributed to neutral foundations.", "entries": [ { "id": "aaif", "subject": "Agentic AI Foundation (Linux Foundation)", "tag": "Foundation", "fact": "Formed 2025-12-09 with founding contributions of Anthropic’s MCP, Block’s goose, and OpenAI’s AGENTS.md. Listed platinum members: AWS, Anthropic, Block, Bloomberg, Cloudflare, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI.", "asOf": "2025-12-09", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Linux Foundation Announces the Formation of the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF)", "publisher": "Linux Foundation", "url": "https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-announces-the-formation-of-the-agentic-ai-foundation", "date": "2025-12-09" }, { "title": "Donating the Model Context Protocol and establishing the Agentic AI Foundation", "publisher": "Anthropic", "url": "https://www.anthropic.com/news/donating-the-model-context-protocol-and-establishing-of-the-agentic-ai-foundation", "date": "2025-12-09" } ], "context": "Membership does not by itself indicate control of a project; MCP technical direction is set by its Technical Steering Committee.", "significance": "It establishes a vendor-neutral steward for the foundational agent-tooling standards (MCP among them) that the rest of the protocol stack builds on.", "trend": "consolidating", "contested": "Whether platinum membership by the same firms that compete on agent platforms translates into genuinely neutral governance or de facto incumbent influence over project direction.", "related": [ "mcp", "mcp-rc", "mcp-apps", "x402-foundation", "ap2-fido", "anthropic", "openai" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-aaif" }, { "id": "x402-foundation", "subject": "x402 Foundation (Linux Foundation)", "tag": "Foundation", "fact": "The x402 stablecoin-payments protocol moved to the Linux Foundation as the new x402 Foundation (2026-04-02), with founding members including Adyen, AWS, American Express, Circle, Cloudflare, Coinbase, Google, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe, and Visa.", "asOf": "2026-04-02", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Linux Foundation launches the x402 Foundation", "publisher": "Linux Foundation", "url": "https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/linux-foundation-is-launching-the-x402-foundation-and-welcoming-the-contribution-of-the-x402-protocol-302732803.html", "date": "2026-04-02" } ], "significance": "It moves the leading agent-native stablecoin payment standard out of a single company's control into a foundation backed jointly by card networks, processors, and crypto firms.", "trend": "consolidating", "related": [ "x402", "aws-agentcore-payments", "coinbase-base-mcp", "fireblocks-agentic", "allunity", "aaif", "ap2-fido", "x402-volume" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-x402-foundation" }, { "id": "ap2-fido", "subject": "AP2 → FIDO Alliance", "tag": "Foundation", "fact": "Google announced (2026-04-28) it is donating AP2 to the FIDO Alliance, alongside a Mastercard-co-developed \"Verifiable Intent\" standard. The FIDO Alliance accepted the protocol and formed an Agentic Authentication Technical Working Group (co-led by CVS Health, Google, and OpenAI) to develop interoperable agentic-payment standards.", "asOf": "2026-04-29", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Google donates Agent Payments Protocol to FIDO Alliance", "publisher": "Google (The Keyword)", "url": "https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/platforms/google-pay/agent-payments-protocol-fido-alliance/", "date": "2026-04-28" }, { "title": "Google donates Agent Payments Protocol to FIDO Alliance", "publisher": "FIDO Alliance", "url": "https://fidoalliance.org/google-donates-agent-payments-protocol-to-fido-alliance/", "date": "2026-04-29" }, { "title": "FIDO Alliance to start work on interoperable standards for agentic commerce", "publisher": "Biometric Update", "url": "https://www.biometricupdate.com/202604/fido-alliance-to-start-work-on-interoperable-standards-for-agentic-commerce", "date": "2026-04-29" } ], "significance": "It places agent-payment authorization under the same standards body that governs passkeys, signaling that proving authenticated purchase intent is being treated as an identity-and-authentication problem.", "trend": "consolidating", "contested": "How AP2's mandate model and the new Verifiable Intent standard will interoperate with the competing card-network and protocol-level authentication approaches now in the market.", "related": [ "ap2", "x402-foundation", "web-bot-auth", "aaif", "mastercard-agent-pay", "visa-tap", "amex-agentic" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-ap2-fido" }, { "id": "web-bot-auth", "subject": "Web Bot Auth (IETF)", "tag": "Agent identity", "fact": "Applies HTTP Message Signatures (RFC 9421) so a bot operator signs each request with an Ed25519 key and identifies itself via a Signature-Agent header. The IETF chartered a WebBotAuth Working Group after a BoF at IETF 123; Cloudflare cites AWS WAF, Vercel, Shopify, and Akamai as implementers.", "asOf": "2026-04-01", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "Using cryptography to verify bot and agent traffic", "publisher": "Cloudflare", "url": "https://blog.cloudflare.com/web-bot-auth/", "date": "2025-05-21" }, { "title": "Web Bot Auth — bot verification docs", "publisher": "Cloudflare", "url": "https://developers.cloudflare.com/bots/reference/bot-verification/web-bot-auth/", "date": "2026-04-01" } ], "context": "Both sources are Cloudflare; IETF working-group milestones are aspirational and a draft is not a ratified internet standard.", "significance": "It offers a cryptographic way for sites to distinguish authorized AI agents from malicious bots, the same access-control question being litigated in Amazon v. Perplexity.", "trend": "emerging", "contested": "Whether the IETF effort reaches a ratified standard and sees adoption beyond the Cloudflare-cited implementers, given both current sources are Cloudflare's own and the working-group milestones are aspirational.", "related": [ "visa-tap", "ap2-fido", "amazon-perplexity-injunction", "amazon-perplexity-appeal", "shopify", "visa-icc" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-web-bot-auth" }, { "id": "lf-dns-aid", "subject": "Linux Foundation DNS-AID project", "fact": "The Linux Foundation announced DNS-AID, an open-source project (originally developed by Infoblox) that lets AI agents and MCP servers be published, discovered, and verified through existing DNS infrastructure by extending DNS Service Binding (SVCB) and HTTPS records, providing a vendor-neutral decentralized alternative to centralized agent registries. Ships with a Python SDK, CLI, and MCP server.", "tag": "agent-discovery-identity", "asOf": "2026-06-01", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Linux Foundation Announces DNS-AID Project to Advance Decentralized AI Agent Discovery", "publisher": "Linux Foundation", "url": "https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-announces-dns-aid-project-to-advance-decentralized-ai-agent-discovery", "date": "2026-05-27" }, { "title": "DNS-AID lets AI agents find and verify each other through DNS", "publisher": "Help Net Security", "url": "https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2026/06/01/dns-aid-ai-agent-discovery-dns/", "date": "2026-06-01" } ], "significance": "Puts agent discovery/verification on the internet's existing trust root (DNS+PKI) under neutral foundation governance, directly competing with proprietary registries for the discover step of the chain.", "trend": "emerging", "contested": "Overlaps and partly competes with GoDaddy's Agent Name Service registry and Cloudflare's Web Bot Auth registry; consolidation of which DNS-anchored approach wins is unresolved.", "related": [ "godaddy-ans", "cf-godaddy-partnership" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-lf-dns-aid" }, { "id": "godaddy-ans", "subject": "GoDaddy Agent Name Service (ANS) Registry", "fact": "GoDaddy launched the Agent Name Service Registry, an open standard binding an AI agent's identity to a domain name using DNS and PKI certificates. Each agent gets a unique human-readable name and cryptographically verifiable identity; registered agents earn an ANS-verified badge. GoDaddy opened a public ANS API and a standards site publishing the open spec, with a registration authority orchestrating issuance like domain registration. Based on IETF draft-narajala-ans.", "tag": "agent-naming-identity", "asOf": "2026-02-17", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Building Trust at Internet Scale: GoDaddy's Agent Name Service Registry for the Agentic AI Marketplace", "publisher": "GoDaddy", "url": "https://www.godaddy.com/resources/news/building-trust-at-internet-scale-godaddys-agent-name-service-registry-for-the-agentic-ai-marketplace", "date": "2026-02-17" }, { "title": "GoDaddy Launches Agent Name Service to Secure AI Agent Ecosystem", "publisher": "TechAfrica News", "url": "https://techafricanews.com/2026/02/17/godaddy-launches-agent-name-service-to-secure-ai-agent-ecosystem/", "date": "2026-02-17" } ], "significance": "First production domain-bound trust/naming layer for agents from a major registrar, making agent identity issuance an extension of domain registration.", "trend": "advancing", "related": [ "lf-dns-aid", "cf-godaddy-partnership" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-godaddy-ans" }, { "id": "cf-godaddy-partnership", "subject": "Cloudflare + GoDaddy open agentic web partnership", "fact": "Cloudflare and GoDaddy announced a strategic partnership to provide an agent identity/trust layer by jointly supporting both ANS (GoDaddy's naming standard) and Web Bot Auth (Cloudflare's cryptographic verification), and integrating Cloudflare's AI Crawl Control into GoDaddy hosting so site owners can see and control AI-crawler/agent access.", "tag": "agent-trust-access", "asOf": "2026-04-17", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Cloudflare and GoDaddy Partner to Help Enable an Open Agentic Web", "publisher": "Cloudflare", "url": "https://www.cloudflare.com/press/press-releases/2026/cloudflare-and-godaddy-partner-to-help-enable-an-open-agentic-web/", "date": "2026-04-07" }, { "title": "Cloudflare and GoDaddy Launch Partnership to Manage AI Crawlers and Agent Identity", "publisher": "TechAfrica News", "url": "https://techafricanews.com/2026/04/17/cloudflare-and-godaddy-launch-partnership-to-manage-ai-crawlers-and-agent-identity/", "date": "2026-04-17" } ], "significance": "Aligns the two leading non-payments agent-identity stacks (naming + cryptographic verification) behind one bundled offering, signaling convergence of the access-control and identity layers for the discover step.", "trend": "consolidating", "related": [ "godaddy-ans", "lf-dns-aid", "web-bot-auth" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-cf-godaddy-partnership" }, { "id": "nist-caisi-agent-standards", "subject": "NIST CAISI AI Agent Standards Initiative", "fact": "NIST's Center for AI Standards and Innovation launched the AI Agent Standards Initiative across three pillars: industry-led standards development, community-led open-source protocol development, and foundational AI agent security and identity research. The companion NCCoE concept paper 'Accelerating the Adoption of Software and AI Agent Identity and Authorization' (public comment closed April 2, 2026) proposes applying OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, and SPIFFE/SPIRE to agents as distinct non-human identities.", "tag": "government-identity-framework", "asOf": "2026-03-01", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Announcing the 'AI Agent Standards Initiative' for Interoperable and Secure Innovation", "publisher": "NIST", "url": "https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2026/02/announcing-ai-agent-standards-initiative-interoperable-and-secure", "date": "2026-02-17" }, { "title": "Shaping the future of AI security: NIST seeking input on agent identity & authorization", "publisher": "Hogan Lovells", "url": "https://www.hoganlovells.com/en/publications/shaping-the-future-of-ai-security-nist-seeking-input-on-agent-identity-authorization", "date": "2026-03-01" } ], "significance": "First U.S. government framework explicitly treating agent identity/authorization as a standards problem, lending federal weight to applying existing IAM standards (OAuth/OIDC/SPIFFE) to agents.", "trend": "advancing", "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-nist-caisi-agent-standards" }, { "id": "w3c-agent-identity-registry-cg", "subject": "W3C Agent Identity Registry Protocol Community Group", "fact": "A new W3C Community Group, proposed April 22 and launched April 24, 2026, to develop open specs for verifiable AI agent identity: a DID method for agent identity resolution, an agent credential format based on W3C Verifiable Credentials, a cross-organizational trust-negotiation protocol, revocation/lifecycle management, integration profiles with MCP/A2A/OAuth-OIDC/SPIFFE, and post-quantum cryptographic requirements.", "tag": "standards-body-identity", "asOf": "2026-04-24", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Call for Participation in Agent Identity Registry Protocol Community Group", "publisher": "W3C", "url": "https://www.w3.org/community/agent-identity/2026/04/24/call-for-participation-in-agent-identity-registry-protocol-community-group/", "date": "2026-04-24" }, { "title": "Agent Identity Registry Protocol Community Group", "publisher": "W3C", "url": "https://www.w3.org/community/agent-identity/", "date": "2026-04-24" } ], "significance": "Brings W3C's DID/Verifiable Credentials stack directly to agent identity with explicit cross-org trust negotiation, a distinct standards-body track from the payments (FIDO/EMVCo) and HTTP-signature (IETF) efforts.", "trend": "emerging", "related": [ "w3c-ai-agent-protocol-cg" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-w3c-agent-identity-registry-cg" }, { "id": "w3c-ai-agent-protocol-cg", "subject": "W3C AI Agent Protocol Community Group", "fact": "W3C Community Group developing open, interoperable protocols for AI agents to discover, identify, and collaborate across the Web, including a cross-origin agent communication security model spanning authentication, authorization, verifiable-credential-based trust, and end-to-end encryption.", "tag": "standards-body-protocol", "asOf": "2026-05-31", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "AI Agent Protocol Community Group", "publisher": "W3C", "url": "https://www.w3.org/community/agentprotocol/", "date": "2026-05-31" }, { "title": "Call for Participation in AI Agent Protocol Community Group", "publisher": "W3C", "url": "https://www.w3.org/community/agentprotocol/2025/05/08/call-for-participation-in-ai-agent-protocol-community-group/", "date": "2025-05-08" } ], "significance": "Establishes a W3C track for the discovery/identity/trust handshake between agents, complementing the payments-focused bodies on the evaluate step of the chain.", "trend": "advancing", "related": [ "w3c-agent-identity-registry-cg" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-w3c-ai-agent-protocol-cg" }, { "id": "openid-aiim-whitepaper", "subject": "OpenID Foundation AIIM Community Group identity whitepaper", "fact": "The OpenID Foundation's Artificial Intelligence Identity Management Community Group published 'Identity Management for Agentic AI', a landscape assessment urging standards bodies to formalize agent identity and delegation, and proposing On-Behalf-Of (OBO) token-exchange flows that carry the original user's identity and the delegating agent's identity as separate sub and act (actor) claims rather than impersonation. Follow-on 2026 work continues in the AIIM CG and eKYC/IDA WG.", "tag": "agent-delegation-tokens", "asOf": "2026-04-28", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "New whitepaper tackles AI agent identity challenges", "publisher": "OpenID Foundation", "url": "https://openid.net/new-whitepaper-tackles-ai-agent-identity-challenges/", "date": "2025-10-07" }, { "title": "Artificial Intelligence Identity Management Community Group", "publisher": "OpenID Foundation", "url": "https://openid.net/cg/artificial-intelligence-identity-management-community-group/", "date": "2026-04-28" } ], "significance": "Defines the leading standards-track answer for representing delegated authority (user + agent as distinct actors), underpinning trustworthy agent action in the evaluate/pay steps.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "Whitepaper concludes existing OAuth/OIDC already cover many cases, contesting the narrative that wholly new identity primitives are required.", "related": [ "w3c-agent-identity-registry-cg" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-openid-aiim-whitepaper" }, { "id": "emvco-agentic", "subject": "EMVCo agentic payments specification work", "fact": "EMVCo announced it is developing how its global card specifications -- EMV 3-D Secure (3DS), EMV Payment Tokenisation, and EMV Secure Remote Commerce (SRC) -- can be enhanced to support secure card-based agentic payments, addressing how agent-initiated transactions are initiated, authenticated, and secured. 2026 priorities include a Digital Payment Credentials schema for credential provisioning/verification and streamlining the SRC spec; Tokenisation Technical Framework v2.4 was in draft with comments closing May 1, 2026.", "tag": "payment-standards-body", "asOf": "2026-01-01", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "EMVCo Working on How Global Specifications Can Support Agentic Payments", "publisher": "EMVCo", "url": "https://www.emvco.com/news/emvco-working-on-how-global-specifications-can-support-agentic-payments/", "date": "2025-11-20" }, { "title": "Enabling Seamless and Secure Payments in 2026", "publisher": "EMVCo", "url": "https://www.emvco.com/knowledge-hub/enabling-seamless-and-secure-payments-in-2026/", "date": "2026-01-01" } ], "significance": "The card-network technical body (Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Discover, JCB, UnionPay) putting agentic commerce inside the existing 3DS/tokenisation/SRC rails -- the authentication/security backbone for the pay step.", "trend": "advancing", "related": [ "visa-tap" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-emvco-agentic" }, { "id": "cf-signed-agents", "subject": "Cloudflare Signed Agents and Signature Agent Card registry", "fact": "Cloudflare extended its verified-bots program with 'signed agents' -- end-user-directed agents validated by Web Bot Auth cryptographic HTTP signatures -- and introduced the Signature Agent Card (agent name, operator, expected request rate, cryptographic keys) so developers can transparently publish agent identity. Agents are submitted via the Cloudflare dashboard and shown publicly in the Radar directory. Initial cohort: OpenAI ChatGPT agent, Block goose, Browserbase, Anchor Browser.", "tag": "agent-verification-registry", "asOf": "2026-01-01", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "The age of agents: cryptographically recognizing agent traffic", "publisher": "Cloudflare", "url": "https://blog.cloudflare.com/signed-agents/", "date": "2025-08-28" }, { "title": "Signed agents", "publisher": "Cloudflare Docs", "url": "https://developers.cloudflare.com/bots/concepts/bot/signed-agents/", "date": "2026-01-01" } ], "significance": "First operational agent-verification registry and identity-card format at edge scale, gating which agents reach merchants (the discover step) and supplying the public keys that downstream payment protocols reference.", "trend": "consolidating", "related": [ "web-bot-auth", "visa-tap" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-cf-signed-agents" }, { "id": "aws-agentcore-webbotauth", "subject": "Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Browser Web Bot Auth", "fact": "AWS added Web Bot Auth (preview) to the Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Browser, letting agent traffic be cryptographically signed so participating sites can verify it and reduce CAPTCHA challenges for legitimate agents. AWS also collaborated with Cloudflare on a Feb 2026 open registry format standardizing how agent public keys are discovered.", "tag": "agent-auth-runtime", "asOf": "2026-02-01", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Reduce CAPTCHAs for AI agents browsing the web with Web Bot Auth (Preview) in Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Browser", "publisher": "AWS Machine Learning Blog", "url": "https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine-learning/reduce-captchas-for-ai-agents-browsing-the-web-with-web-bot-auth-preview-in-amazon-bedrock-agentcore-browser/", "date": "2026-02-01" }, { "title": "Reducing CAPTCHAs with Web Bot Auth - Amazon Bedrock AgentCore", "publisher": "AWS Documentation", "url": "https://docs.aws.amazon.com/bedrock-agentcore/latest/devguide/browser-web-bot-auth.html", "date": "2026-02-01" } ], "significance": "A hyperscaler agent-runtime emitting Web Bot Auth signatures closes the loop with the edge verifiers (Cloudflare/Akamai), making signed-agent identity practical end-to-end for the discover/evaluate steps.", "trend": "emerging", "related": [ "cf-signed-agents", "web-bot-auth" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-aws-agentcore-webbotauth" } ], "stateOfPlay": "Two patterns run in parallel: vendor-originated agentic standards are converging on neutral homes (MCP, goose, and AGENTS.md under the Agentic AI Foundation; x402 and AP2 routed to the Linux Foundation and FIDO Alliance), and a distinct agent-identity and trust layer has formed across DNS and PKI (DNS-AID, GoDaddy ANS), edge verification (Cloudflare signed agents and Web Bot Auth, AWS AgentCore), standards bodies (W3C and OpenID community groups, EMVCo), and government (NIST CAISI).", "highlights": [ "Three vendor-origin standards moved to neutral homes in about six months: MCP to the Agentic AI Foundation (Dec 2025, platinum members include AWS, Anthropic, Block, Cloudflare, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI), x402 to the Linux Foundation’s x402 Foundation (Apr 2026), and AP2 to the FIDO Alliance (Apr 2026).", "A dedicated agent-identity layer is forming on DNS and PKI — the Linux Foundation’s DNS-AID and GoDaddy’s Agent Name Service registry, with Cloudflare and GoDaddy partnering to align naming (ANS) and cryptographic verification (Web Bot Auth, built on RFC 9421).", "Edge verification is operational: Cloudflare’s signed agents and Signature Agent Card registry launched with OpenAI’s ChatGPT agent, Block goose, Browserbase, and Anchor Browser, and AWS Bedrock AgentCore Browser added Web Bot Auth signing in preview.", "Standards bodies and government are formalizing agent identity in parallel tracks — two W3C community groups (DID/Verifiable Credentials), OpenID’s AIIM whitepaper proposing On-Behalf-Of token exchange, NIST CAISI’s AI Agent Standards Initiative, and EMVCo extending 3DS/tokenisation/SRC." ] }, { "id": "legal", "title": "Legal & regulatory", "intro": "The boundaries courts and regulators are drawing around agent access and AI in commerce. These are contested and moving.", "entries": [ { "id": "amazon-perplexity-injunction", "subject": "Amazon v. Perplexity — injunction", "tag": "Litigation", "fact": "On 2026-03-10 a US federal judge (N.D. Cal.) granted Amazon a preliminary injunction blocking Perplexity’s Comet agent from accessing logged-in Amazon pages under the CFAA and California’s CDAFA, finding Comet accessed accounts with user permission but without Amazon’s authorization.", "asOf": "2026-03-10", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Amazon Wins Preliminary Injunction Against Perplexity’s Comet", "publisher": "Search Engine Journal", "url": "https://www.searchenginejournal.com/amazon-wins-preliminary-injunction-against-perplexitys-comet/569256/", "date": "2026-03-10" }, { "title": "Amazon.com Services LLC v. Perplexity AI, Inc. (docket)", "publisher": "CourtListener", "url": "https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71874820/amazoncom-services-llc-v-perplexity-ai-inc/", "date": "2026-03-10" } ], "context": "A preliminary injunction reflects likelihood of success, not a final judgment — and it was stayed on appeal.", "significance": "It is the first US court ruling to apply anti-hacking statutes (CFAA/CDAFA) to an AI shopping agent accessing logged-in pages with the user's credentials but without the site's authorization.", "trend": "contested", "contested": "Whether an agent acting on a user's behalf with the user's permission can still be unauthorized access under the CFAA when the site objects — the ruling found likelihood of success but was stayed before any final judgment.", "related": [ "amazon-perplexity-appeal", "perplexity", "amazon", "web-bot-auth", "visa-tap", "perplexity-oral-argument" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-amazon-perplexity-injunction" }, { "id": "amazon-perplexity-appeal", "subject": "Amazon v. Perplexity — appeal", "tag": "Litigation", "fact": "Around 2026-03-17 the Ninth Circuit temporarily stayed the injunction pending appeal, letting Comet continue operating on Amazon’s logged-in pages. The Ninth Circuit heard oral argument on 2026-06-11 in Seattle in docket 26-1444; no appellate decision had issued as of that hearing.", "asOf": "2026-06-11", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Appeals court temporarily pauses order blocking Perplexity’s AI shopping agent", "publisher": "CyberScoop", "url": "https://cyberscoop.com/perplexity-comet-ai-shopping-agent-amazon-lawsuit-ninth-circuit-stay/", "date": "2026-03-18" }, { "title": "Live Streams and Videos — Amazon.com Services, LLC v. Perplexity AI, Inc.", "publisher": "Ninth Circuit", "url": "https://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/cases/streams-videos/", "date": "2026-06-11" } ], "significance": "The Ninth Circuit's stay lets Comet keep operating on Amazon's logged-in pages while the appeal proceeds, and the June 11 argument moved the precedent-setting question from briefing to decision watch.", "trend": "contested", "contested": "How the Ninth Circuit will rule on whether user-authorized agent access to a merchant account violates the CFAA remains undecided after oral argument.", "related": [ "amazon-perplexity-injunction", "perplexity", "amazon", "web-bot-auth", "perplexity-oral-argument" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-amazon-perplexity-appeal" }, { "id": "eu-ai-act", "subject": "EU AI Act — Digital Omnibus", "tag": "Regulation", "fact": "On 2026-05-07 the Council and Parliament reached a provisional \"Digital Omnibus\" agreement deferring high-risk obligations: stand-alone (Annex III) systems to 2027-12-02 and product-embedded (Annex I) systems to 2028-08-02. Most Article 50 transparency duties still apply from 2026-08-02, with synthetic-content watermarking (Article 50(2)) postponed to 2026-12-02. Formal adoption is expected around July 2026.", "asOf": "2026-05-13", "verification": "developing", "sources": [ { "title": "Artificial intelligence: Council and Parliament agree to simplify and streamline rules", "publisher": "Council of the EU (Consilium)", "url": "https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2026/05/07/artificial-intelligence-council-and-parliament-agree-to-simplify-and-streamline-rules/", "date": "2026-05-07" }, { "title": "AI Act update: EU resolves to change rules and extend deadlines", "publisher": "Latham & Watkins", "url": "https://www.lw.com/en/insights/ai-act-update-eu-resolves-to-change-rules-and-extend-deadlines", "date": "2026-05-13" } ], "context": "A provisional political agreement, not yet formally adopted; applies horizontally to AI systems, not specifically to agentic commerce.", "significance": "The deadline deferrals reset the compliance timeline that AI systems used in commerce across the EU must plan against, pushing most high-risk obligations into 2027-2028.", "trend": "contested", "contested": "The agreement is provisional and not yet formally adopted, so the final deadlines, scope, and which transparency duties survive remain unsettled pending the expected mid-2026 adoption.", "related": [ "eu-ai-act-adoption", "allunity", "mastercard-agent-pay" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-eu-ai-act" }, { "id": "rbi-authentication-directions-2026", "subject": "India RBI Authentication Mechanisms Directions 2025", "fact": "The RBI's 'Authentication Mechanisms for Digital Payment Transactions Directions, 2025' take effect 1 April 2026, ending the OTP-only era and moving from rule-based to risk-based authentication using contextual parameters (location, device, behavior, history) while keeping 2FA as the minimum. The RBI is building an AI-driven Digital Payments Intelligence Platform to flag risky transactions in real time.", "tag": "payments-regulation", "asOf": "2026-01-01", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "RBI Sets New Digital Payments Authentication Rules, Ends OTP-only Era From April 2026", "publisher": "BW Businessworld", "url": "https://www.businessworld.in/article/rbi-sets-new-digital-payments-authentication-rules-ends-otp-only-era-from-april-2026-573192", "date": "2026-01-01" }, { "title": "RBI's new authentication directions: Strengthening digital payment security", "publisher": "IBM", "url": "https://www.ibm.com/think/perspectives/strengthening-digital-payment-security-with-rbi-new-authentication-directions", "date": "2026-01-01" } ], "significance": "A major non-US/EU jurisdiction moving to risk-based, non-OTP authentication — the regulatory shift that makes card-not-present agent payments workable in India's UPI/card ecosystem.", "trend": "advancing", "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-rbi-authentication-directions-2026" }, { "id": "cma-agentic-ai-consumers-2026", "subject": "UK CMA guidance: 'Agentic AI and Consumers'", "fact": "On 9 March 2026 the UK Competition and Markets Authority published guidance stating that existing UK consumer-protection law already applies to agentic AI that shops, books, switches providers, or executes purchases on a consumer's behalf. The CMA proposes no new rules but warns agents may not be 'faithful servants' -- they could surface higher-revenue products, enable dark patterns, create lock-in, or facilitate algorithmic collusion -- and requires deployers to ensure transparency, accountability, and human oversight.", "tag": "consumer-protection", "asOf": "2026-03-10", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Agentic AI and consumers", "publisher": "GOV.UK / CMA", "url": "https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/agentic-ai-and-consumers/agentic-ai-and-consumers", "date": "2026-03-09" }, { "title": "CMA warns AI agents may not be 'faithful servants'", "publisher": "The Register", "url": "https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/03/10/cma-warns-ai-agents-may-not-be-faithful-servants/5221541", "date": "2026-03-10" } ], "significance": "First explicit regulator statement that the full agent discover-evaluate-pay chain is already bound by consumer law, framed around agent loyalty/bias rather than data scraping.", "trend": "advancing", "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-cma-agentic-ai-consumers-2026" }, { "id": "psd3-psr-agentic-payments-2026", "subject": "EU PSD3 / PSR and AI-initiated payments", "fact": "On 27 November 2025 the European Parliament and Council reached provisional political agreement on PSD3 and the Payment Services Regulation, expected in the Official Journal around end of Q2 2026 with implementation not before 2027. The current framework assumes a human initiated the purchase; agentic commerce blurs 'customer-initiated' vs 'merchant-initiated' definitions, and the regime must reconcile delegated payment initiation and liability for AI-executed transactions, overlapping with the AI Act and GDPR.", "tag": "eu-payments", "asOf": "2026-02-01", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "PSD3 and PSR: From provisional agreement to 2026 readiness", "publisher": "Norton Rose Fulbright", "url": "https://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/en/knowledge/publications/cedd39c6/psd3-and-psr-from-provisional-agreement-to-2026-readiness", "date": "2026-02-01" }, { "title": "Agentic AI in payments: Key regulatory considerations", "publisher": "Taylor Wessing", "url": "https://www.taylorwessing.com/en/insights-and-events/insights/2026/02/agentic-ai-in-payments", "date": "2026-02-01" } ], "significance": "Bounds the 'pay' step in the EU: whether an AI agent's transaction is legally a customer- or merchant-initiated payment determines liability and authentication obligations.", "trend": "emerging", "related": [ "eu-ai-act" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-psd3-psr-agentic-payments-2026" }, { "id": "google-serpapi-scraping-2026", "subject": "Google v. SerpApi scraping suit", "fact": "Google sued SerpApi in December 2025 alleging its web scraping circumvents security measures protecting copyrighted material in search results; SerpApi filed a motion to dismiss the DMCA claim on 20 February 2026, arguing the conduct is not circumvention.", "tag": "agent-access", "asOf": "2026-02-21", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "SerpApi asks court to dismiss Google web scraping lawsuit", "publisher": "The Register", "url": "https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/2026/02/21/serpapi-asks-court-to-dismiss-google-web-scraping-lawsuit/4591023", "date": "2026-02-21" }, { "title": "SerpApi Files Motion to Dismiss Google's Web Scraping Lawsuit", "publisher": "ALM Corp", "url": "https://almcorp.com/blog/serpapi-google-lawsuit-motion-dismiss-web-scraping-dmca/", "date": "2026-02-20" } ], "significance": "A platform-vs-scraper case (beyond Amazon v. Perplexity) testing whether automated access to a discovery surface is DMCA circumvention -- bounds agent discovery of catalog/search data.", "trend": "emerging", "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-google-serpapi-scraping-2026" } ], "stateOfPlay": "The boundaries are being drawn across multiple jurisdictions at once — the US (Amazon v. Perplexity on agent access, Google v. SerpApi on scraping), the UK (CMA guidance), the EU (AI Act deferral, PSD3/PSR), and India (RBI authentication directions) — with the central US question of whether user-permitted agent access can override site authorization still unresolved on appeal.", "highlights": [ "The defining US case is Amazon v. Perplexity: a March 2026 preliminary injunction under the CFAA and California’s CDAFA against Comet accessing logged-in pages, stayed by the Ninth Circuit, with oral argument set for 2026-06-11; a second US suit, Google v. SerpApi, tests whether automated access to search results is DMCA circumvention.", "Regulators are applying existing law rather than writing new rules: the UK CMA (9 March 2026) said consumer-protection law already covers agents that shop or pay, warning they may not be \"faithful servants,\" while India’s RBI ends the OTP-only era for digital payments from 1 April 2026.", "EU frameworks are mid-flight: the AI Act’s high-risk obligations were provisionally deferred (Digital Omnibus, May 2026) to 2027–2028 pending formal adoption, while PSD3/PSR — provisionally agreed November 2025 — must reconcile whether an agent payment is customer- or merchant-initiated." ] }, { "id": "funding", "title": "Funding & players", "intro": "Recent financings and revenue milestones for companies building in or adjacent to agentic commerce. Amounts and valuations are as reported by the cited source; single-outlet funding reports are marked reported, not verified.", "entries": [ { "id": "sierra", "subject": "Sierra", "tag": "Adjacent: enterprise agents", "fact": "Raised $950M at a post-money valuation above $15B (led by Tiger Global and GV). Reported crossing $100M ARR by November 2025 and $150M+ ARR by February 2026; prior rounds valued it at $4.5B (late 2024) and $10B (Sept 2025).", "asOf": "2026-05-04", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Sierra raises $950M as the race to own enterprise AI gets serious", "publisher": "TechCrunch", "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/04/sierra-raises-950m-as-the-race-to-own-enterprise-ai-gets-serious/", "date": "2026-05-04" }, { "title": "Bret Taylor’s Sierra raises nearly $1B in latest AI capital push", "publisher": "CNBC", "url": "https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/04/bret-taylor-sierra-fundraise-openai.html", "date": "2026-05-04" } ], "significance": "Sierra builds enterprise customer-service and conversational agents deployed by brands — a merchant-side AI layer adjacent to, rather than part of, the consumer discover-compare-buy loop; its scale is a benchmark for enterprise agent-vendor revenue.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "The $100M+ and $150M+ ARR milestones are self-reported and not independently audited, and the >$15B post-money valuation rests on the cited round.", "related": [ "anthropic" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-sierra" }, { "id": "catena-labs", "subject": "Catena Labs", "tag": "Series A", "fact": "Raised a $30M Series A (led by Acrew Capital and a16z crypto; Breyer, General Catalyst, QED) for banking and governance infrastructure that lets AI agents transact under human-set guardrails, and concurrently filed for a national trust bank charter with the OCC. Co-founded in 2025 by Circle co-founder Sean Neville.", "asOf": "2026-05-20", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Circle cofounder raises $30 million for Series A “AI-native bank” Catena Labs", "publisher": "Fortune", "url": "https://fortune.com/2026/05/20/catena-labs-series-a-sean-neville-ai-native-bank/", "date": "2026-05-20" }, { "title": "Catena Labs lands $30M Series A, files for national trust bank charter", "publisher": "The Block", "url": "https://www.theblock.co/post/402029/catena-labs-lands-30-million-series-a-files-for-national-trust-bank-charter-to-underpin-agentic-finance", "date": "2026-05-20" } ], "context": "Valuation not disclosed.", "significance": "Catena Labs is building bank-grade infrastructure and pursuing a national trust bank charter so AI agents can hold and move money under human-set guardrails, targeting the regulated financial layer of agent transactions.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "The valuation was not disclosed, and the OCC national trust bank charter application is pending, not granted.", "related": [ "nekuda", "crossmint", "ap2", "fireblocks-agentic", "coinbase-base-mcp" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-catena-labs" }, { "id": "crossmint", "subject": "Crossmint", "tag": "Funding", "fact": "Raised $23.6M (led by Ribbit Capital; Franklin Templeton, NYCA, First Round) to expand wallet, stablecoin, and credential APIs for businesses and AI agents.", "asOf": "2025-03-18", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Crossmint raises $23.6M, led by Ribbit Capital", "publisher": "Crossmint", "url": "https://www.crossmint.com/announcement/crossmint-raises-23-6m-led-by-ribbit-capital", "date": "2025-03-18" } ], "significance": "Crossmint provides wallet, stablecoin, and credential APIs that give agents the means to hold funds and present verifiable credentials when transacting.", "trend": "advancing", "related": [ "nekuda", "catena-labs", "x402", "fireblocks-agentic" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-crossmint" }, { "id": "primer", "subject": "Primer", "tag": "Series C", "fact": "London-based payments infrastructure provider Primer raised a $100M Series C (led by Sofina; Peak XV, Balderton, Accel, ICONIQ, Tencent), aimed at making payments AI-enabled and expanding its \"Primer Companion\" agent to operate within merchant-set parameters.", "asOf": "2026-05-20", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "Balderton-backed payments startup Primer raises $100m Series C", "publisher": "Sifted", "url": "https://sifted.eu/articles/primer-raises-100m-series-c", "date": "2026-05-20" } ], "significance": "Primer is an established payments-orchestration provider extending its routing infrastructure and a merchant-scoped agent into agent-initiated payments, signaling incumbent payments infrastructure moving toward agents.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "The $100M Series C is reported by a single outlet and the valuation is not disclosed.", "related": [ "stripe-acp", "visa-icc", "nekuda" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-primer" }, { "id": "nekuda", "subject": "Nekuda", "tag": "Seed", "fact": "Raised $5M (led by Madrona; Amex Ventures and Visa Ventures participating) for an \"Agent Wallet\" that delegates payment credentials to agents with spending limits and approval requirements.", "asOf": "2025-05-16", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Nekuda secures funding led by Madrona to enable agentic payments", "publisher": "Crowdfund Insider", "url": "https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2025/05/239660-fintech-startup-nekuda-secures-funding-led-by-madrona-ventures-to-enable-agentic-payments/", "date": "2025-05-16" }, { "title": "Nekuda Raises $5M Led by Madrona, with Amex Ventures and Visa Ventures", "publisher": "Business Wire", "url": "https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250514808097/en/Nekuda-Raises-%245M-Led-by-Madrona-Together-with-Amex-Ventures-and-Visa-Ventures-to-Power-Agentic-Payments", "date": "2025-05-14" } ], "significance": "Nekuda's Agent Wallet delegates payment credentials to agents with spending limits and approval rules, addressing the authorization-scoping problem at the core of agent payments; backing by Amex and Visa Ventures ties it to the card networks' agent-payment efforts.", "trend": "advancing", "related": [ "crossmint", "catena-labs", "amex-agentic", "visa-tap", "ap2" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-nekuda" }, { "id": "salesforce-cimulate-acquisition", "subject": "Salesforce acquisition of Cimulate", "fact": "On 2026-02-17 Salesforce announced a definitive agreement to acquire Cimulate, the AI startup behind CommerceGPT (an intent-driven product-discovery engine), to strengthen search and discovery in Agentforce Commerce.", "tag": "M&A", "asOf": "2026-02-17", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Salesforce to acquire Cimulate in agentic commerce expansion", "publisher": "Digital Commerce 360", "url": "https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2026/02/17/salesforce-acquisition-cimulate-agentic-commerce/", "date": "2026-02-17" }, { "title": "Salesforce’s acquisition of Cimulate to boost AI shopping", "publisher": "TechTarget", "url": "https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/news/366639253/Salesforces-acquisition-of-Cimulate-to-boost-AI-shopping", "date": "2026-02-17" } ], "significance": "It is an incumbent consolidating AI-native product-discovery technology into an enterprise commerce platform.", "trend": "consolidating", "related": [ "salesforce-agentforce-commerce", "spangle", "channel3" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-salesforce-cimulate-acquisition" }, { "id": "phia-series-a-2026", "subject": "Phia", "fact": "AI shopping agent Phia (co-founded by Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni) raised a $35M Series A at a $185M valuation, led by Notable Capital with participation from Khosla Ventures and returning investor Kleiner Perkins. Company reports 1M+ users in ~10 months, 6,200+ brand partners, and 11x revenue growth since launch.", "tag": "shopping-agent", "asOf": "2026-01-27", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Phia Raises $35M Series A to Build the AI Alignment Layer for Commerce", "publisher": "GlobeNewswire (company release)", "url": "https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/01/27/3226735/0/en/Phia-Raises-35M-Series-A-to-Build-the-AI-Alignment-Layer-for-Commerce.html", "date": "2026-01-27" }, { "title": "Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni's Phia raises $35M to 'make shopping fun again'", "publisher": "TechCrunch", "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/27/phoebe-gates-and-sophia-kiannis-phia-raises-35m-to-make-shopping-fun-again/", "date": "2026-01-27" } ], "significance": "One of the largest consumer AI-shopping-agent rounds to date; signals investor appetite for agents that own the consumer shopping journey directly.", "trend": "advancing", "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-phia-series-a-2026" }, { "id": "basis-theory-series-b-2025", "subject": "Basis Theory", "fact": "Payments-vault/tokenization provider Basis Theory raised a $33M Series B led by Costanoa, with Stage 2 Capital, Moneta VC, Bessemer, Kindred Ventures, Box Group, and Offline Ventures. Brings total raised to roughly $50M. Company leads the Agentic Commerce Consortium (20+ companies).", "tag": "agent-payments-infra", "asOf": "2025-10-16", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Basis Theory Raises $33M to Power Agentic Commerce and the Next Era of Merchant Payments", "publisher": "PR Newswire (company release)", "url": "https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/basis-theory-raises-33m-to-power-agentic-commerce-and-the-next-era-of-merchant-payments-302582581.html", "date": "2025-10-14" }, { "title": "Basis Theory raises $33m for agentic commerce", "publisher": "Finextra", "url": "https://www.finextra.com/pressarticle/107508/basis-theory-raises-33m-for-agentic-commerce", "date": "2025-10-16" } ], "significance": "Positions a payments-data vault as foundational infrastructure for agent-led checkout; consortium leadership is a standards-setting play.", "trend": "advancing", "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-basis-theory-series-b-2025" }, { "id": "gensmo-seed-2025", "subject": "Gensmo", "fact": "AI fashion shopping/styling agent Gensmo raised over $60M in angel/seed funding within months of its December 2024 launch. Founding team includes former Google and Alibaba executives; company reports 500,000+ registered users and 100M indexed products in beta.", "tag": "shopping-agent", "asOf": "2025-06-27", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Gensmo Secures $60M+ in Angel Funding to Reinvent Fashion E-Commerce with AI", "publisher": "PR Newswire (company release)", "url": "https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/gensmo-secures-60m-in-angel-funding-to-reinvent-fashion-e-commerce-with-ai-302493059.html", "date": "2025-06-27" }, { "title": "AI-powered fashion agent Gensmo secures 60 million dollars in funding", "publisher": "FashionUnited", "url": "https://fashionunited.com/news/business/ai-powered-fashion-agent-gensmo-secures-60-million-dollars-in-funding/2025062766848", "date": "2025-06-27" } ], "significance": "One of the largest early-stage bets in fashion AI; an outlier seed in an otherwise modest-median market.", "trend": "emerging", "contested": "Characterized variously as 'angel' and 'seed'; round structure not fully standard.", "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-gensmo-seed-2025" }, { "id": "envive-series-a-2025", "subject": "Envive AI", "fact": "Seattle-based Envive AI raised a $15M Series A led by Fuse VC with Point72 Ventures, bringing total funding to $20M. Builds self-improving, brand-safe AI agents for online retail across search, sales, content, and support.", "tag": "commerce-agents", "asOf": "2025-09-29", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Envive AI Raises $15M Series A to Power Self-Improving Agents for the Agentic Commerce Era", "publisher": "Envive (company release)", "url": "https://www.envive.ai/post/envive-ai-raises-15m-series-a-to-power-self-improving-agents-for-the-agentic-commerce-era", "date": "2025-09-17" }, { "title": "Commerce is entering the agentic era: Envive raises $15M", "publisher": "GeekWire", "url": "https://www.geekwire.com/2025/commerce-is-entering-the-agentic-era-envive-raises-15m-to-build-ai-agents-for-online-retailers/", "date": "2025-09-29" } ], "significance": "Reinforcement-learning approach to merchant-side commerce agents; led by ex-Walmart genAI lead.", "trend": "advancing", "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-envive-series-a-2025" }, { "id": "remark-series-a-2025", "subject": "Remark", "fact": "Remark raised a $16M Series A led by Inspired Capital with participation from Stripe, Neo, Spero Ventures, Shine Capital, and Visible Ventures, bringing total funding to $27M. Builds human-trained AI product experts that answer shopper questions on merchant sites.", "tag": "conversational-commerce", "asOf": "2025-07-01", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Remark Raises $16M Series A to Humanize AI in Online Shopping", "publisher": "BusinessWire (company release)", "url": "https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250701814033/en/Remark-Raises-$16M-Series-A-to-Humanize-AI-in-Online-Shopping", "date": "2025-07-01" }, { "title": "Remark raises $16M to build out human-powered expert models for e-commerce", "publisher": "TechCrunch", "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/01/remark-raises-16-million-in-to-build-out-human-powered-expert-models-for-e-commerce/", "date": "2025-07-01" } ], "significance": "Stripe participation links payments incumbent to conversational-commerce assistant tooling.", "trend": "advancing", "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-remark-series-a-2025" }, { "id": "albatross-series-a-2025", "subject": "Albatross", "fact": "Zurich-based Albatross (founded by former Amazon AI leaders) raised $12.5M led by MMC Ventures with Redalpine and Daphni, bringing total funding to $16M. Builds a real-time product- and content-discovery platform that adapts as users browse.", "tag": "discovery", "asOf": "2025-11-18", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Albatross raises $12.5 million to reinvent real-time product discovery for the modern web", "publisher": "GlobeNewswire (company release)", "url": "https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2025/11/18/3190043/0/en/Albatross-raises-12-5-million-to-reinvent-real-time-product-discovery-for-the-modern-web.html", "date": "2025-11-18" }, { "title": "Former Amazon leaders launch Albatross AI powered product discovery platform from stealth", "publisher": "Retail Technology Innovation Hub", "url": "https://retailtechinnovationhub.com/home/2025/11/18/former-amazon-leaders-launch-albatross-ai-powered-product-discovery-platform-from-stealth", "date": "2025-11-18" } ], "significance": "European real-time discovery infrastructure aimed at marketplaces, retail, and travel.", "trend": "emerging", "contested": "Round labeled Series A in some trackers; company frames it as new funding atop a 2024 foundation round.", "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-albatross-series-a-2025" }, { "id": "onton-seed-2025", "subject": "Onton", "fact": "San Francisco-based AI product-discovery startup Onton raised a $7.5M seed led by Footwork with Liquid 2, Parable Ventures, and 43, bringing total funding to about $10M. Natural-language and image search aggregating product data web-wide; reports 2M+ monthly users.", "tag": "discovery", "asOf": "2025-12-01", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Onton raises $7.5M to expand its AI-powered shopping site beyond furniture", "publisher": "TechCrunch", "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/26/onton-raises-7-5m-to-expand-its-ai-powered-shopping-site-beyond-furniture/", "date": "2025-11-26" }, { "title": "Onton Raises $7.5M in Seed Funding", "publisher": "FinSMEs", "url": "https://www.finsmes.com/2025/12/onton-raises-7-5m-in-seed-funding.html", "date": "2025-12-01" } ], "significance": "Neurosymbolic product-discovery engine expanding from furniture into apparel and electronics.", "trend": "emerging", "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-onton-seed-2025" }, { "id": "vambe-series-a-2025", "subject": "Vambe", "fact": "Santiago, Chile-based conversational-commerce platform Vambe raised a $14M Series A led by Monashees with Cathay Latam, Atlantico, Tekton Ventures, Chile Ventures, SkyDeck Berkeley, Nazca, and M13. Reports 1,700+ customers and WhatsApp-first AI sales agents across LatAm.", "tag": "conversational-commerce", "asOf": "2025-12-04", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "AI startup Vambe raises $14M to automate conversational commerce", "publisher": "SiliconANGLE", "url": "https://siliconangle.com/2025/12/03/ai-startup-vambe-raises-14m-automate-conversational-commerce/", "date": "2025-12-03" }, { "title": "Vambe Raises $14M Series A Led by Monashees", "publisher": "Gunderson Dettmer (counsel release)", "url": "https://www.gunder.com/en/news-insights/client-news/vambe-raises-14-million-usd-series-a-led-by-monashees", "date": "2025-12-04" } ], "significance": "Largest-profile LatAm conversational-commerce round; planning an agent-to-agent advertising/recommendations engine.", "trend": "advancing", "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-vambe-series-a-2025" }, { "id": "limy-seed-2026", "subject": "Limy", "fact": "New York-based Limy emerged from stealth with a $10M seed led by Flybridge, with a16z speedrun, Axiom, Clarim, AnD, Communitas, and JRV. Operates an infrastructure layer that decodes AI agent/bot interactions so brands can control visibility and conversions in AI-driven shopping; cites Fortune 100 users.", "tag": "agent-visibility-infra", "asOf": "2026-01-28", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Limy Raised $10M to Build the Infrastructure for the Agentic Web", "publisher": "Limy (company blog)", "url": "https://limy.ai/blog/limy-raised-10m-to-build-the-infrastructure-for-the-agentic-web", "date": "2026-01-28" }, { "title": "Agentic web specialist Limy emerges from stealth as startup bags $10 million in funding", "publisher": "Retail Technology Innovation Hub", "url": "https://retailtechinnovationhub.com/home/2026/1/28/agentic-web-specialist-limy-emerges-from-stealth-as-startup-bags-10-million-in-funding", "date": "2026-01-28" } ], "significance": "Attribution/visibility layer for brands when agents (not humans) do the shopping — a new sub-category.", "trend": "emerging", "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-limy-seed-2026" }, { "id": "circuit-chisel-seed-2025", "subject": "Circuit & Chisel", "fact": "Circuit & Chisel (founded by former Stripe crypto leads Louis Amira and David Noel-Romas) raised $19.2M seed from Primary Venture Partners, ParaFi Capital, and Stripe, with Coinbase Ventures, Solana Ventures, Samsung Next, and Polygon Labs. Launched ATXP, a web-wide agent-transaction protocol for autonomous micropayments.", "tag": "agent-payments-infra", "asOf": "2025-09-25", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Circuit & Chisel Secures $19.2 Million and Launches ATXP, a Web-Wide Protocol for Agentic Payments", "publisher": "PR Newswire (company release)", "url": "https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/circuit--chisel-secures-19-2-million-and-launches-atxp-a-web-wide-protocol-for-agentic-payments-302562331.html", "date": "2025-09-25" }, { "title": "Circuit & Chisel raises $19.2m to launch agentic payments protocol", "publisher": "Startup Weekly", "url": "https://startup-weekly.com/Circuit-and-Chisel-raises-19-2m-to-launch-agentic-payments-protocol/", "date": "2025-09-25" } ], "significance": "Ex-Stripe crypto team plus Stripe/Coinbase backing for an agent-native micropayments protocol.", "trend": "emerging", "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-circuit-chisel-seed-2025" }, { "id": "natural-seed-2025", "subject": "Natural", "fact": "Fintech Natural emerged from stealth with a $9.8M seed co-led by Abstract and Human Capital, with Forerunner Ventures and operator-angels including the CEOs of Bridge, Mercury, Ramp, and Vercel. Builds financial rails for autonomous agents to initiate, authorize, and execute payments.", "tag": "agent-payments-infra", "asOf": "2025-10-23", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Fintech Natural Launches With $9.8M Seed Round to Power Agentic Payments", "publisher": "BusinessWire (company release)", "url": "https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251023151615/en/Fintech-Natural-Launches-With-$9.8M-Seed-Round-to-Power-Agentic-Payments", "date": "2025-10-23" }, { "title": "Exclusive: Natural raises $9.8M to power agentic payments", "publisher": "Axios", "url": "https://www.axios.com/pro/fintech-deals/2025/10/23/natural-9-million-agentic-payments", "date": "2025-10-23" } ], "significance": "Deep operator-angel syndicate (Bridge, Mercury, Ramp) backing agent payment rails.", "trend": "emerging", "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-natural-seed-2025" }, { "id": "nava-seed-2026", "subject": "Nava", "fact": "Nava (founders ex-EigenLayer) raised an $8.3M seed co-led by Polychain and Archetype. Builds a trust/verification layer that escrows user funds and validates whether a proposed agent transaction matches user intent before execution; runs as a Layer 3 on Arbitrum.", "tag": "agent-payments-infra", "asOf": "2026-04-17", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Nava raises $8.3 million in seed funding to keep AI financial agents from going off the rails", "publisher": "Fortune", "url": "https://fortune.com/2026/04/14/nava-seed-funding-ai-financial-agents/", "date": "2026-04-14" }, { "title": "From Agentic Payments to AI Infrastructure: This Week's Startup Funding", "publisher": "PYMNTS", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/artificial-intelligence-2/2025/from-agentic-payments-to-ai-infrastructure-this-weeks-startup-funding/", "date": "2026-04-17" } ], "significance": "Intent-verification/escrow as a distinct trust primitive for agent commerce, on-chain.", "trend": "emerging", "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-nava-seed-2026" }, { "id": "ralio-preseed-2026", "subject": "Ralio", "fact": "London-based Ralio raised a $2.5M (≈€2.1M) pre-seed led by Sure Valley Ventures, with Seed X, Love Ventures, Plug and Play, Antler, and others; described as Europe's largest agentic-payments round to date and reportedly 3x oversubscribed. Provides a trust layer (identity, guardrails, audit) between AI agents and payment rails.", "tag": "agent-payments-infra", "asOf": "2026-04-14", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Ralio Raises $2.5M in Europe's largest agentic payments round", "publisher": "Ralio (company Substack)", "url": "https://ralio.substack.com/p/ralio-raises-25m-in-europes-largest", "date": "2026-04-14" }, { "title": "Ralio raises $2.5m in Europe's biggest agentic payments round", "publisher": "FinTech Global", "url": "https://fintech.global/2026/04/14/ralio-raises-2-5m-in-europes-biggest-agentic-payments-round/", "date": "2026-04-14" } ], "significance": "Europe's headline early-stage agent-payments trust-layer raise; B2B procurement/payroll/treasury focus.", "trend": "emerging", "contested": "Reported as both $2.5M and €2.1M depending on outlet; 'largest in Europe' is a company claim.", "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-ralio-preseed-2026" }, { "id": "paypal-acquire-cymbio-2026", "subject": "PayPal / Cymbio (M&A)", "fact": "PayPal agreed to acquire Cymbio, a multi-channel orchestration platform that makes merchant catalogs discoverable across marketplaces and AI shopping surfaces (e.g., Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity); announced Jan 22, 2026 and completed Feb 5, 2026. Terms undisclosed. Cymbio will power PayPal's 'Store Sync' agentic-commerce service.", "tag": "ma", "asOf": "2026-01-22", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "PayPal to Acquire Cymbio, Accelerating Agentic Commerce Capabilities", "publisher": "PayPal Newsroom", "url": "https://newsroom.paypal-corp.com/2026-01-22-PayPal-to-Acquire-Cymbio,-Accelerating-Agentic-Commerce-Capabilities", "date": "2026-01-22" } ], "significance": "A payments incumbent acquiring catalog-discoverability tooling specifically to feed AI shopping channels.", "trend": "consolidating", "contested": "Deal value not disclosed.", "related": [ "paypal-agentic" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-paypal-acquire-cymbio-2026" }, { "id": "adyen-acquire-talonone-2026", "subject": "Adyen / Talon.One (M&A)", "fact": "Adyen agreed to acquire Berlin-based loyalty-and-promotions platform Talon.One for €750M (Adyen's first acquisition), announced Apr 23, 2026, expected to close 2H 2026. Talon.One (~€60M ARR) brings real-time loyalty, identity, and SKU-level incentive decisioning; Adyen frames it as strengthening its agentic-commerce position.", "tag": "ma", "asOf": "2026-04-23", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Adyen to acquire Talon.One to enable real-time decisioning across commerce channels", "publisher": "Adyen (primary)", "url": "https://www.adyen.com/press-and-media/2i4hnm0pfcpvc7", "date": "2026-04-23" }, { "title": "Adyen acquires loyalty and incentives platform Talon.One for EUR 750 mln", "publisher": "The Paypers", "url": "https://thepaypers.com/mergers-aquisitions-and-investments/news/adyen-acquires-loyalty-and-incentives-platform-talonone-for-eur-750-mln", "date": "2026-04-23" } ], "significance": "Largest disclosed agentic-commerce-adjacent M&A in the window; payments giant buying real-time decisioning for earlier-in-funnel agent transactions.", "trend": "consolidating", "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-adyen-acquire-talonone-2026" }, { "id": "accenture-invest-davinci-2026", "subject": "Accenture / DaVinci Commerce (strategic investment)", "fact": "Accenture (via Accenture Ventures) made a strategic investment in DaVinci Commerce, an agentic AI-led shopping company, plus an Accenture Song partnership to operationalize agentic commerce from discovery through checkout, fulfillment, and loyalty; announced Mar 23, 2026. Amount undisclosed.", "tag": "strategic-investment", "asOf": "2026-03-23", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Accenture Invests in DaVinci Commerce to Advance Agentic AI-Led Shopping", "publisher": "Accenture Newsroom (primary)", "url": "https://newsroom.accenture.com/news/2026/accenture-invests-in-davinci-commerce-to-advance-agentic-ai-led-shopping", "date": "2026-03-23" }, { "title": "Accenture Invests in DaVinci Commerce to Advance Agentic AI-Led Shopping", "publisher": "BusinessWire", "url": "https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260323242269/en/Accenture-Invests-in-DaVinci-Commerce-to-Advance-Agentic-AI-Led-Shopping", "date": "2026-03-23" } ], "significance": "Major consultancy placing a strategic bet on an agentic-shopping platform with a go-to-market partnership.", "trend": "consolidating", "contested": "Investment amount not disclosed.", "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-accenture-invest-davinci-2026" } ], "stateOfPlay": "Roughly sixteen financings span from pre-seed trust-layer rounds to $35M+ consumer-agent rounds, concentrated in agent payment, wallet, and banking infrastructure, alongside a wave of incumbent M&A and strategic investment. Reported ARR and valuations across the cohort are largely self-reported and unaudited.", "highlights": [ "Capital concentrates in agent payment, wallet, banking, and trust infrastructure — Primer ($100M Series C), Catena Labs ($30M Series A, plus a national trust bank charter filing), Circuit & Chisel ($19.2M), Crossmint ($23.6M), Natural ($9.8M), Nava ($8.3M), Nekuda ($5M), and Ralio (~$2.5M pre-seed, billed as Europe’s largest agentic-payments round).", "Consumer shopping agents and discovery startups drew the largest commerce-native rounds — Gensmo ($60M+ angel/seed), Phia ($35M Series A at a $185M valuation, 1M+ users), Remark ($16M), Envive ($15M), Vambe ($14M), Albatross ($12.5M), Limy ($10M), and Onton ($7.5M).", "Incumbent M&A and strategic investment accelerated — PayPal/Cymbio, Salesforce/Cimulate, Adyen/Talon.One (€750M, Adyen’s first acquisition), Capital One/Brex ($5.15B, pairing the Discover network with agent-spend tooling), and Accenture/DaVinci Commerce.", "The cohort’s largest financing is Sierra ($950M at a valuation above $15B), an enterprise-agent vendor adjacent to the consumer buy-loop; commerce-native and agent-payment raises are an order of magnitude smaller." ] }, { "id": "adoption", "title": "Adoption & proof points", "intro": "Quantified signals of real-world adoption. Each is directional and should be read with its base rate; absolute volumes are often small and several figures are self-reported.", "entries": [ { "id": "forrester-state", "subject": "Forrester — mid-2026 reality check", "tag": "Analyst assessment", "fact": "A Forrester analysis (2026-05-28) states that as of mid-2026 very few consumers allow AI agents to complete purchases without oversight; chat-based product discovery is widespread but humans still drive decisions and checkout in most cases, and most current value comes from improved discovery and referral traffic rather than autonomous transaction completion.", "asOf": "2026-05-28", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "The State of Agentic Commerce in Mid-2026", "publisher": "Forrester", "url": "https://www.forrester.com/blogs/the-state-of-agentic-commerce-in-mid-2026/", "date": "2026-05-28" } ], "context": "Single analyst source; qualitative framing rather than hard new metrics.", "significance": "It frames the gap between widespread AI-assisted discovery and the still-rare practice of letting agents complete purchases without human oversight.", "trend": "emerging", "contested": "It is a single analyst's qualitative framing rather than corroborated quantitative measurement.", "related": [ "shopify-ai-orders", "openai", "walmart-chatgpt", "x402-volume" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-forrester-state" }, { "id": "shopify-ai-orders", "subject": "Shopify — AI-referred orders", "tag": "AI-referred orders", "fact": "Reported (Q1 2026) that AI-referred orders grew ~13x year-over-year and AI-chatbot referral sessions grew 8x+; AI-referred sessions converted ~50% higher than organic search with 14% higher average order value. Shopify states organic search still refers more total sessions than all tracked AI platforms combined.", "asOf": "2026-05-11", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "AI-referred shoppers convert better and spend more (2026)", "publisher": "Shopify", "url": "https://www.shopify.com/enterprise/blog/ai-search-insights", "date": "2026-05-11" } ], "context": "First-party data off a very small base; multiples reflect a low starting denominator, not absolute scale.", "significance": "It is one of the first large first-party datasets quantifying how AI-referred shoppers convert and spend relative to organic search.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "The growth multiples are first-party figures off a very small starting base, so they overstate absolute scale.", "related": [ "shopify", "ucp", "forrester-state", "walmart-chatgpt" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-shopify-ai-orders" }, { "id": "mcp-servers", "subject": "MCP server ecosystem", "tag": "Ecosystem size", "fact": "As of 2026-05-24 the official MCP Registry reported 9,652 latest server records. Other public aggregators report different totals, so there is no single authoritative count.", "asOf": "2026-05-24", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "Official MCP Registry", "publisher": "Model Context Protocol", "url": "https://registry.modelcontextprotocol.io/", "date": "2026-05-24" } ], "context": "A registered server does not imply it is maintained, secure, or actively used; aggregator counts vary by inclusion criteria.", "significance": "Registry counts are the most-cited proxy for how widely the tool-integration layer has been built out.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "Public aggregators report different totals and a registered server does not imply it is maintained, secure, or used.", "related": [ "mcp", "mcp-rc", "mcp-apps", "aaif" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-mcp-servers" }, { "id": "walmart-chatgpt", "subject": "Walmart", "tag": "ChatGPT app", "fact": "Walmart launched an in-ChatGPT app (Sparky) supporting account linking, loyalty, and Walmart-managed payment (web first). Walmart pilot data cited in reporting put ChatGPT-sourced conversion at ~70% of its direct-site rate.", "asOf": "2026-03-20", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "Walmart brings Sparky to ChatGPT as OpenAI rethinks Instant Checkout", "publisher": "Retail Dive", "url": "https://www.retaildive.com/news/walmart-sparky-chatgpt-instant-checkout/815647/", "date": "2026-03-20" } ], "context": "Self-reported vendor pilot figure, not independently audited; a relative ratio with no disclosed absolute volume.", "significance": "It is a large retailer's live in-ChatGPT app pairing account linking and merchant-managed payment with a reported conversion benchmark against its own site.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "The ~70% conversion ratio is a self-reported pilot figure with no disclosed absolute volume and is not independently audited.", "related": [ "openai", "openai-apps-sdk", "acp", "forrester-state" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-walmart-chatgpt" }, { "id": "x402-volume", "subject": "x402 — onchain volume", "tag": "Onchain volume", "fact": "As of March 2026, an independent onchain analysis put x402 at roughly $28,000 in daily payment volume across ~131,000 transactions (~$0.20 average), estimating roughly half reflect self-dealing or wash trading rather than genuine commerce.", "asOf": "2026-03-11", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "Coinbase-backed AI payments protocol: demand is just not there yet", "publisher": "CoinDesk", "url": "https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2026/03/11/coinbase-backed-ai-payments-protocol-wants-to-fix-micropayment-but-demand-is-just-not-there-yet", "date": "2026-03-11" } ], "context": "Coinbase-cited cumulative figures are higher; this reflects an independent analysis disputing real demand.", "significance": "It is an independent attempt to measure real onchain agent-payment activity against widely cited cumulative protocol claims.", "trend": "stalling", "contested": "The independent analysis estimates roughly half the volume is self-dealing or wash trading, while Coinbase-cited cumulative figures are far higher.", "related": [ "x402", "x402-foundation", "coinbase-base-mcp", "aws-agentcore-payments" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-x402-volume" }, { "id": "anthropic-project-deal", "subject": "Anthropic — Project Deal", "tag": "Capability experiment", "fact": "Anthropic published (2026-04-24) an experiment in which custom Claude agents for 69 employees negotiated autonomously across four Slack marketplaces, completing 186 deals across 500+ items totaling just over $4,000; Opus 4.5 agents outperformed Haiku 4.5 agents.", "asOf": "2026-04-24", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Project Deal: our Claude-run marketplace experiment", "publisher": "Anthropic", "url": "https://www.anthropic.com/features/project-deal", "date": "2026-04-24" } ], "context": "A controlled internal experiment, not a market deployment.", "significance": "It is a controlled measurement of autonomous agent-to-agent negotiation and deal completion, including a model-capability comparison.", "trend": "emerging", "contested": "It is an internal experiment over a small employee population and total value, not a market deployment.", "related": [ "anthropic", "a2a", "forrester-state" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-anthropic-project-deal" }, { "id": "instacart-acp-instant-checkout", "subject": "Instacart — first ChatGPT Instant Checkout app", "fact": "On 2025-12-08 Instacart announced it is the first company to offer an embedded end-to-end shopping and Instant Checkout experience inside ChatGPT (shopping from 1,800+ retailers in a conversation), built on the Agentic Commerce Protocol with payments powered by Stripe (credit card at launch).", "tag": "First live ACP merchant", "asOf": "2025-12-08", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Instacart App Launches in OpenAI ChatGPT — First to Offer Instant Checkout", "publisher": "Instacart (Investor Relations)", "url": "https://investors.instacart.com/news-releases/news-release-details/instacart-app-launches-openai-chatgpt-first-company-offer-new", "date": "2025-12-08" }, { "title": "Instacart App Launches in OpenAI ChatGPT — First to Offer Instant Checkout", "publisher": "PR Newswire", "url": "https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/instacart-app-launches-in-openai-chatgpt--first-company-to-offer-new-instant-checkout-app-experience-302635106.html", "date": "2025-12-08" } ], "significance": "It is the first live, in-conversation end-to-end checkout on ChatGPT using ACP and Stripe — the protocol moving from announcement to a named production merchant.", "trend": "advancing", "context": "A single named merchant deployment; not evidence of broad adoption.", "related": [ "acp", "stripe-acp", "openai", "walmart-chatgpt" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-instacart-acp-instant-checkout" }, { "id": "qwen-ai-shopping-scale", "subject": "Alibaba Qwen (proof-point)", "tag": "metric", "fact": "Earlier in 2026, Alibaba's Qwen reached 300 million monthly active users across Taobao, Tmall, Alipay and other consumer surfaces, with roughly 140 million first-time AI shopping experiences logged during the Chinese New Year campaign.", "asOf": "2026-05-10", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "Alibaba integrates Qwen AI with Taobao for end-to-end agentic shopping", "publisher": "The Next Web", "url": "https://thenextweb.com/news/alibaba-integrates-qwen-ai-with-taobao", "date": "2026-05-10" } ], "significance": "One of the largest documented consumer-adoption signals for AI shopping anywhere, evidencing that agentic shopping has moved past pilot scale in China well ahead of Western markets.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "MAU figure spans multiple surfaces (not shopping-only); the 140M 'first-time AI shopping experiences' is a campaign metric reported by Alibaba.", "related": [ "jd-jingyan" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-qwen-ai-shopping-scale" }, { "id": "mercadopago-assistant-resolution", "subject": "Mercado Libre (proof-point)", "tag": "metric", "fact": "Mercado Libre's AI assistant handled more than 9 million conversations in 4Q25 and resolved 87% of them without human support, while a seller-side AI assistant now touches ~20% of GMV.", "asOf": "2026-02-26", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "MercadoLibre Inc (MELI) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Highlights", "publisher": "Yahoo Finance / GuruFocus", "url": "https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mercadolibre-inc-meli-q4-2025-050131605.html", "date": "2026-02-26" } ], "significance": "A rare hard, earnings-disclosed metric on agent autonomy in LATAM — 87% no-human resolution at multi-million-conversation scale shows production-grade agent deployment, not a pilot.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "Self-reported in earnings; 'resolution' definition is the company's.", "related": [ "qwen-ai-shopping-scale" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-mercadopago-assistant-resolution" }, { "id": "adobe-holiday-2025-ai-traffic", "subject": "Adobe Analytics — Holiday 2025 generative-AI retail traffic", "fact": "Adobe reported US retail traffic from generative-AI sources grew ~693% YoY across Nov-Dec 2025 (769% Nov, 673% Dec). AI-sourced visitors converted 31% more than non-AI traffic (double the 2024 gap; 54% higher on Thanksgiving, 38% on Black Friday), with revenue per visit up 254% YoY, bounce rate 33% lower, and time-on-site 45% higher. Based on 1T+ visits to US retail sites.", "tag": "ai-referral-traffic", "asOf": "2026-01-13", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Generative AI shifts online holiday shopping traffic in 2025", "publisher": "Digital Commerce 360", "url": "https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2026/01/13/generative-ai-online-holiday-shopping-traffic-2025/", "date": "2026-01-13" }, { "title": "Adobe: Holiday Shopping Season Drove a Record $257.8 Billion Online", "publisher": "Adobe", "url": "https://news.adobe.com/news/2026/01/adobe-holiday-shopping-season", "date": "2026-01-01" } ], "significance": "The most granular holiday-2025 dataset on AI-referred shopping behavior and conversion lift along discover-evaluate.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "Percentages are off a very low base — AI-sourced visits were still a low single-digit share of total retail traffic in late 2025, so triple-digit growth and conversion gaps reflect early-adopter, high-intent users, not the typical shopper. Adobe Analytics traffic data, not a controlled study.", "related": [ "salesforce-holiday-2025-ai-influence", "bain-agentic-2030-forecast", "akamai-ai-bot-traffic-2025" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-adobe-holiday-2025-ai-traffic" }, { "id": "salesforce-holiday-2025-ai-influence", "subject": "Salesforce — AI/agent-influenced holiday 2025 spend", "fact": "Salesforce estimated AI and agents influenced ~$262B of global online holiday spend (≈20% of global online holiday spend), from analysis of 1.5B shoppers across 89 countries. Retailers that deployed branded agents pre-season grew 2025 holiday sales 59% faster (6.2% vs 3.9% YoY); AI-assistant retail traffic grew 119% YoY in H1 2025; Nov-Dec saw a 66% rise in agentic-conversation rate and 142% rise in autonomous actions; 77.6% of global consumers said they used AI for shopping in the prior six months.", "tag": "ai-influenced-spend", "asOf": "2026-01-01", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Salesforce Unveils Agentforce Commerce Capabilities as AI Assistants Grow Retail Traffic Volumes by 119%", "publisher": "Salesforce", "url": "https://www.salesforce.com/news/stories/agentforce-commerce-capabilities-announcement/", "date": "2025-11-17" }, { "title": "How AI agents shaped the record-breaking 2025 holiday season", "publisher": "MarTech", "url": "https://martech.org/how-ai-agents-shaped-the-record-breaking-2025-holiday-season/", "date": "2026-01-01" } ], "significance": "Quantifies AI's influence on the discover-evaluate step at global holiday scale and links branded-agent deployment to measurable sales growth.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "'Influenced' is a broad attribution (any AI touch in the journey, including recommendations/service) — it is NOT agent-completed checkout, and the 20% share conflates assistive AI with autonomous agents. The 59% faster-growth figure is correlational (self-selected retailers), not causal. Vendor analysis of its own customer base.", "related": [ "adobe-holiday-2025-ai-traffic", "bain-agentic-2030-forecast" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-salesforce-holiday-2025-ai-influence" }, { "id": "bain-agentic-2030-forecast", "subject": "Bain — 2030 US agentic-commerce forecast", "fact": "Bain (December 2025) forecasts the US agentic-commerce market could reach $300B-$500B by 2030, roughly 15-25% of overall e-commerce, defining agentic commerce as purchases initiated, influenced, or completed by third-party or retailer-hosted AI agents (excluding AI-assisted search/discovery only). It notes 30-45% of US consumers already use generative AI for product research/comparison, but most remain uncomfortable letting AI handle an end-to-end transaction.", "tag": "market-forecast", "asOf": "2025-12-22", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "2030 Forecast: How Agentic AI Will Reshape US Retail", "publisher": "Bain & Company", "url": "https://www.bain.com/insights/2030-forecast-how-agentic-ai-will-reshape-us-retail-snap-chart/", "date": "2025-12-01" }, { "title": "Bain: Agentic AI could account for 25% of U.S. ecommerce sales by 2030", "publisher": "Digital Commerce 360", "url": "https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2025/12/22/bain-agentic-ai-us-ecommerce-sales-2030/", "date": "2025-12-22" } ], "significance": "A defined, mid-range 2030 forecast that excludes mere AI-assisted discovery, making it a comparatively conservative bound on the full agent purchase chain.", "trend": "emerging", "contested": "A 2030 projection with a wide $300-500B / 15-25% range, not a measured current figure. The 30-45% 'use AI for research' base rate is research/comparison only — not purchasing — and Bain itself flags low current comfort with autonomous checkout.", "related": [ "adobe-holiday-2025-ai-traffic", "salesforce-holiday-2025-ai-influence", "gartner-b2b-agents-2028" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-bain-agentic-2030-forecast" }, { "id": "akamai-ai-bot-traffic-2025", "subject": "Akamai — AI bot traffic share of web traffic", "fact": "Akamai reported AI bot traffic across its network surged 300%+ since it began tracking, now ~1% of total bot traffic; AI-originated visits grew from roughly 1 in 200 to 1 in 50 visits. AI training crawlers remain the largest AI-bot category, far exceeding AI fetchers, AI search crawlers, and AI agents. Travel, retail, and media are the largest/fastest-growing industries for AI bot traffic.", "tag": "agent-traffic-share", "asOf": "2026-04-08", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Akamai Research: AI Bots Threaten the Foundation of Web-Based Business Models", "publisher": "Akamai", "url": "https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-research-ai-bots-threaten-foundation-of-web-based-business-models", "date": "2026-04-08" }, { "title": "AI Pulse: How AI Bots and Agents Will Shape 2026", "publisher": "Akamai", "url": "https://www.akamai.com/blog/security/ai-pulse-how-ai-bots-agents-will-shape-2026", "date": "2026-01-01" } ], "significance": "Infrastructure-level measurement of the discover step: purchasing AI agents are still a small slice of AI bot traffic, which is dominated by training crawlers.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "'AI agents' are explicitly the smallest AI-bot category here — the 300% surge is dominated by training crawlers, not shopping agents. AI bots are still only ~1% of bot traffic and the agent sub-share is far lower; network-specific (Akamai) measurement.", "related": [ "cloudflare-pay-per-crawl-2026" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-akamai-ai-bot-traffic-2025" }, { "id": "cloudflare-pay-per-crawl-2026", "subject": "Cloudflare Pay Per Crawl / AI Crawl Control", "fact": "Cloudflare now blocks AI bots by default for new sites and offers Pay Per Crawl, an HTTP-402-based marketplace letting publishers allow, block, or charge per-access AI crawlers; 2.5M+ sites disallow AI training. Early Pay Per Crawl testing on a public dataset reportedly cut unauthorized bot traffic ~32% and lifted data-licensing revenue ~27%. In 2026 AI agents can themselves become Cloudflare customers (account, paid subscription, API token).", "tag": "agent-access-economics", "asOf": "2026-05-01", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "Introducing pay per crawl: Enabling content owners to charge AI crawlers for access", "publisher": "Cloudflare", "url": "https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-pay-per-crawl/", "date": "2025-07-01" }, { "title": "The Closing Web in 2026: How AI Crawler Blocking and Pay-Per-Crawl Changed Web Scraping", "publisher": "Coronium.io", "url": "https://www.coronium.io/blog/closing-web-ai-crawler-blocking-pay-per-crawl-2026", "date": "2026-05-01" } ], "significance": "Creates a programmatic, priced authorization layer for agent access to content — the economic counterpart to the legal robots.txt fights, bounding the discover step.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "The ~32% traffic-cut / ~27% revenue-lift figures come from a single early test reported by secondary sources, not a peer audit; default-block adoption is publisher-reported.", "related": [ "akamai-ai-bot-traffic-2025" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-cloudflare-pay-per-crawl-2026" }, { "id": "visa-mastercard-consumer-trust-2025", "subject": "Visa & Mastercard agentic-shopping consumer trust surveys", "fact": "Visa's 'Earning Trust' survey (US n=1,600, Australia n=1,600, NZ n=500; 2025) found familiarity at 55% (US), ~1 in 3 expecting regular use, ~85% of US respondents saying data-collection visibility is important, ~50% would stop using agents if control disappeared, and barriers led by data-security (50%) and wrong-product (~43%) concerns. Mastercard-cited research found ~two-thirds of consumers use or would use AI shopping agents and ~9 in 10 want decision transparency.", "tag": "consumer-trust", "asOf": "2026-01-01", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Earning Consumer Trust in Agentic Commerce", "publisher": "Visa", "url": "https://corporate.visa.com/en/products/intelligent-commerce/earning-trust-report.html", "date": "2025-01-01" }, { "title": "How Verifiable Intent builds trust in agentic AI commerce", "publisher": "Mastercard", "url": "https://www.mastercard.com/us/en/news-and-trends/stories/2026/verifiable-intent.html", "date": "2026-01-01" } ], "significance": "Quantifies the trust/control gate on consumer willingness to delegate the evaluate-and-pay steps to an agent.", "trend": "emerging", "contested": "Self-reported intent ('would use') overstates real adoption; both surveys are network-funded (Visa/Mastercard) and three-market (Visa), limiting generalizability. Stated transparency demands don't predict behavior.", "related": [ "bain-agentic-2030-forecast", "mastercard-agent-pay", "paypal-merchant-pulse-2026" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-visa-mastercard-consumer-trust-2025" }, { "id": "paypal-merchant-pulse-2026", "subject": "PayPal Agentic Commerce Pulse — US merchant survey", "fact": "PayPal's March 2026 US Agentic Commerce Pulse surveyed 498 US merchants (23 Feb-3 Mar 2026) across small (<$3M, n=166), mid-market ($3M-$20M, n=243), and large (>$20M, n=189) segments to gauge merchant readiness for agentic commerce. PayPal's Agent Ready payments and 'store sync' product discoverability across AI channels roll out in early 2026, with integrations via Wix, BigCommerce/Feedonomics, Cymbio, and Shopware.", "tag": "merchant-readiness", "asOf": "2026-03-01", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "How Merchants Are Preparing for Agentic Commerce — Pulse Report Findings", "publisher": "PayPal", "url": "https://www.paypal.com/us/brc/article/agentic-commerce-pulse-report-findings", "date": "2026-03-01" }, { "title": "PayPal Launches Agentic Commerce Services to Power AI-Driven Shopping", "publisher": "PR Newswire", "url": "https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/paypal-launches-agentic-commerce-services-to-power-ai-driven-shopping-302596548.html", "date": "2025-10-28" }, { "title": "March 2026 Agentic Commerce Pulse: US", "publisher": "PayPal (PDF)", "url": "https://www.paypalobjects.com/marketing/GCI_Q1_26_PayPal_Agentic_Pulse_Final_Report.pdf", "date": "2026-03-01" } ], "significance": "A sized, dated merchant-side readiness study (vs the usual consumer surveys), measuring the supply side of the agent purchase chain.", "trend": "emerging", "contested": "Self-reported merchant survey (n=498) funded by PayPal, which sells the enabling products; readiness sentiment is not realized transaction volume. Headline adoption percentages should be treated as intent, not behavior.", "related": [ "acp-instant-checkout-2026", "visa-mastercard-consumer-trust-2025" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-paypal-merchant-pulse-2026" }, { "id": "acp-instant-checkout-2026", "subject": "OpenAI/Stripe Agentic Commerce Protocol & Instant Checkout merchant scale", "fact": "On 16 February 2026 OpenAI launched 'Buy it in ChatGPT' Instant Checkout for US Plus/Pro/Free users, built on the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) co-developed with Stripe. Etsy sellers are live; over 1M Shopify merchants (Glossier, SKIMS, Spanx, Vuori) are 'coming soon'; Stripe-processing merchants can enable agentic payments in ~one line of code; PayPal's ACP server is slated to add tens of millions of small businesses in 2026.", "tag": "protocol-adoption", "asOf": "2026-02-16", "verification": "verified", "sources": [ { "title": "Buy it in ChatGPT: Instant Checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol", "publisher": "OpenAI", "url": "https://openai.com/index/buy-it-in-chatgpt/", "date": "2026-02-16" }, { "title": "Stripe powers Instant Checkout in ChatGPT and releases Agentic Commerce Protocol", "publisher": "Stripe", "url": "https://stripe.com/newsroom/news/stripe-openai-instant-checkout", "date": "2026-02-16" } ], "significance": "The merchant-supply expansion of an open pay-step protocol — Etsy-live plus large 'coming soon' Shopify/PayPal cohorts that quantify how broadly the pay step is being wired up.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "The 1M Shopify and 'tens of millions' PayPal figures are eligibility/'coming soon' counts announced by the vendors, not live, transacting merchants; actual completed-order volume is unstated.", "related": [ "paypal-merchant-pulse-2026" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-acp-instant-checkout-2026" } ], "stateOfPlay": "Discovery and referral traffic show measurable, growing adoption — often triple-digit but off a low base — while autonomous agent-completed checkout remains rare outside China, and most headline figures are self-reported analyst or vendor numbers.", "highlights": [ "AI-driven discovery is growing sharply off a low base: Adobe reported ~693% YoY growth in US generative-AI retail traffic over Nov–Dec 2025 (with AI-sourced visitors converting 31% more), and Shopify reported ~13x YoY growth in AI-referred orders, while Forrester found few consumers let agents buy unsupervised.", "Headline scale figures are broad-attribution analyst and forecast numbers, not agent-completed checkout — Salesforce estimated AI and agents influenced ~$262B of global online holiday spend, Bain forecasts $300–500B (15–25% of US e-commerce) by 2030, and Gartner predicts ~90% of B2B purchases ($15T+) will be agent-intermediated by 2028.", "Production milestones exist but are isolated in the West (Instacart was the first live ChatGPT Instant Checkout merchant in Dec 2025; Walmart cited ~70% of its direct-site conversion in ChatGPT), while China shows true scale — Alibaba’s Qwen logged ~140M first-time AI shopping experiences and Mercado Libre’s assistant resolved 87% of 9M+ conversations without humans.", "Bot-traffic economics frame the discover step: Akamai put AI bots at ~1% of total bot traffic (dominated by training crawlers, with shopping agents the smallest category), while Cloudflare blocks AI bots by default for new sites and prices access via Pay Per Crawl, with 2.5M+ sites disallowing AI training; the MCP registry reports about 9,652 servers, with other aggregators differing." ] }, { "id": "watch", "title": "What to watch", "intro": "Dated near-term events and unresolved questions. These are forward-looking and marked developing until they land. This section re-surfaces dated milestones from elsewhere in the index as a forward calendar.", "entries": [ { "id": "perplexity-oral-argument", "subject": "Amazon v. Perplexity — oral argument", "tag": "Dated event", "fact": "The Ninth Circuit heard oral argument in the agent-authorization appeal on 2026-06-11 in Seattle (docket 26-1444). The case now awaits a decision on whether user-authorized agent access can override platform authorization.", "asOf": "2026-06-11", "verification": "developing", "sources": [ { "title": "Live Streams and Videos — Amazon.com Services, LLC v. Perplexity AI, Inc.", "publisher": "Ninth Circuit", "url": "https://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/cases/streams-videos/", "date": "2026-06-11" } ], "significance": "It is the first appellate-level test of the agent-access question, so the case now moves from a dated event to a live decision watch for agent shopping access.", "trend": "contested", "contested": "Whether user permission can override platform authorization under the CFAA and CDAFA remains unresolved until the panel rules.", "related": [ "amazon-perplexity-injunction", "amazon-perplexity-appeal", "perplexity", "amazon", "web-bot-auth" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-perplexity-oral-argument" }, { "id": "google-universal-cart-launch", "subject": "Google Universal Cart", "tag": "Dated event", "fact": "Google stated Universal Cart will roll out in Search and Gemini in the US starting summer 2026, expanding across YouTube and Gmail.", "asOf": "2026-05-19", "verification": "developing", "sources": [ { "title": "Google Shopping introduces Universal Cart and agentic shopping", "publisher": "Google", "url": "https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/shopping/google-shopping-cart/", "date": "2026-05-19" } ], "significance": "It is the dated milestone at which a cross-surface agentic cart moves from announcement to live US availability.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "The summer 2026 timing and surface coverage are stated plans not yet shipped.", "related": [ "google", "ucp", "shopify", "ap2" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-google-universal-cart-launch" }, { "id": "eu-ai-act-adoption", "subject": "EU AI Act — formal adoption", "tag": "Dated event", "fact": "The Digital Omnibus deferral agreed 2026-05-07 still requires formal adoption by the Parliament and Council, expected around July 2026. Until then the deferred dates and which Article 50 transparency duties take effect 2026-08-02 are not final.", "asOf": "2026-05-13", "verification": "developing", "sources": [ { "title": "AI Act update: EU resolves to change rules and extend deadlines", "publisher": "Latham & Watkins", "url": "https://www.lw.com/en/insights/ai-act-update-eu-resolves-to-change-rules-and-extend-deadlines", "date": "2026-05-13" } ], "significance": "Formal adoption determines whether the deferred high-risk deadlines and Article 50 transparency dates become binding.", "trend": "advancing", "contested": "The deferral is a provisional political agreement and the final deadlines remain unsettled until Parliament and Council adopt it.", "related": [ "eu-ai-act" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-eu-ai-act-adoption" }, { "id": "aaif-events", "subject": "AGNTCon + MCPCon", "tag": "Dated event", "fact": "The Agentic AI Foundation scheduled AGNTCon + MCPCon Europe for 2026-09-17/18 in Amsterdam and North America for 2026-10-22/23 in San Jose, with additional MCP Dev Summits planned across several cities.", "asOf": "2026-04-02", "verification": "developing", "sources": [ { "title": "Agentic AI Foundation announces global 2026 events program", "publisher": "Linux Foundation", "url": "https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/agentic-ai-foundation-announces-global-2026-events-program-anchored-by-agntcon-mcpcon-north-america-and-europe", "date": "2026-04-02" } ], "significance": "The scheduled conferences are the foundation's first coordinating venues for the agent-protocol ecosystem it now hosts.", "trend": "emerging", "related": [ "aaif", "mcp", "mcp-rc", "a2a" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-aaif-events" }, { "id": "gartner-b2b-agents-2028", "subject": "Gartner — 90% of B2B buying AI-agent intermediated by 2028", "fact": "Gartner (28 November 2025, IT Symposium/Xpo) forecasts that by 2028 ~90% of B2B purchases will be handled by AI agents, channeling $15T+ through automated exchanges, assuming verifiable data feeds and standardized trust frameworks. Gartner separately predicts 60% of brands will use agentic AI for one-to-one interactions by 2028.", "tag": "b2b-forecast", "asOf": "2026-01-15", "verification": "reported", "sources": [ { "title": "Gartner: AI agents will command $15 trillion in B2B purchases by 2028", "publisher": "Digital Commerce 360", "url": "https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2025/11/28/gartner-ai-agents-15-trillion-in-b2b-purchases-by-2028/", "date": "2025-11-28" }, { "title": "Gartner Predicts 60% of Brands Will Use Agentic AI by 2028", "publisher": "Gartner", "url": "https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2026-01-15-gartner-predicts-60-percent-of-brands-will-use-agentic-ai-to-deliver-streamlined-one-to-one-interactions-by-2028", "date": "2026-01-15" }, { "title": "Gartner Predicts By 2028 AI Agents Will Outnumber Sellers by 10X", "publisher": "Gartner", "url": "https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-11-18-gartner-predicts-by-2028-ai-agents-will-outnumber-sellers-by-10x-yet-fewer-than-40-percent-of-sellers-will-report-ai-agents-improved-productivity", "date": "2025-11-18" }, { "title": "Gartner Top Strategic Predictions for 2026 and Beyond", "publisher": "Consumer Goods Technology", "url": "https://consumergoods.com/gartner-reveals-top-strategic-ai-predictions-2026-and-beyond", "date": "2026-01-01" } ], "significance": "An aggressive near-term B2B (not consumer) forecast worth tracking as a date-anchored prediction for the agent purchase chain on the business side.", "trend": "emerging", "contested": "Highly aggressive: 90% within ~3 years is an analyst prediction with no disclosed methodology/sample, is B2B-only (not consumer agentic commerce), and likely counts any agent-intermediated step rather than autonomous purchasing. Treat as a directional bet, not a measured trend.", "related": [ "bain-agentic-2030-forecast" ], "url": "https://poneva.com/state-of-agentic-commerce#entry-gartner-b2b-agents-2028" } ], "stateOfPlay": "The near-term agenda is dominated by a Ninth Circuit ruling on user-authorized agent access, Google's summer rollout of cross-surface checkout, the EU's formal adoption of deferred AI Act deadlines, and an aggressive Gartner B2B forecast worth tracking against measured outcomes.", "highlights": [ "Dated near-term milestones: Ninth Circuit decision watch after the 2026-06-11 agent-access argument, Google Universal Cart US rollout in Search and Gemini (summer 2026), EU AI Act formal adoption (~July 2026), and the Agentic AI Foundation’s AGNTCon/MCPCon in Amsterdam (2026-09-17/18) and San Jose (2026-10-22/23).", "A date-anchored prediction to test: Gartner forecasts ~90% of B2B purchases ($15T+) will be agent-intermediated by 2028 — an aggressive, methodology-undisclosed, B2B-only bet, not a measured trend." ] } ], "glossary": [ { "term": "MCP (Model Context Protocol)", "definition": "An open standard for connecting AI models to external tools and data, used by agents to read catalogs and invoke merchant tools.", "url": "https://modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/2025-11-25" }, { "term": "MCP Apps", "definition": "An official MCP extension for packaging interactive UIs rendered in sandboxed iframes within MCP clients.", "url": "https://blog.modelcontextprotocol.io/posts/2026-01-26-mcp-apps/" }, { "term": "ACP (Agentic Commerce Protocol)", "definition": "An open protocol from OpenAI and Stripe for agent-initiated commerce, covering cart, feed, orders, and checkout.", "url": "https://github.com/agentic-commerce-protocol/agentic-commerce-protocol" }, { "term": "UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol)", "definition": "An open protocol originated by Google and Shopify (with other retailers among its backers) covering the full agent purchase journey, including cart, catalog, and identity linking.", "url": "https://ucp.dev" }, { "term": "AP2 (Agent Payments Protocol)", "definition": "A Google-originated protocol for agent payments using cryptographically signed mandates, now moving to the FIDO Alliance.", "url": "https://github.com/google-agentic-commerce/AP2" }, { "term": "x402", "definition": "An open standard that uses the HTTP 402 status code for onchain stablecoin payments by agents.", "url": "https://docs.cdp.coinbase.com/x402/welcome" }, { "term": "A2A (Agent2Agent)", "definition": "An open protocol, originally from Google and now Linux Foundation-hosted, for one agent to delegate tasks to another.", "url": "https://a2a-protocol.org/latest/" }, { "term": "A2UI", "definition": "A Google-led declarative standard for agents to return UI descriptions rendered from a client-side component catalog.", "url": "https://github.com/google/A2UI" }, { "term": "AG-UI", "definition": "A CopilotKit-originated protocol for streamed, bidirectional state between an agent backend and a front-end application.", "url": "https://github.com/ag-ui-protocol/ag-ui" }, { "term": "MPP (Machine Payments Protocol)", "definition": "An open, HTTP-native payments standard co-authored by Stripe and Tempo that lets AI agents pay machine-to-machine, supporting stablecoin and fiat settlement.", "url": "https://stripe.com/blog/machine-payments-protocol" } ], "changelog": [ { "date": "2026-06-01", "edition": 1, "change": "Initial public edition. Every entry compiled and source-verified against primary sources as of 2026-06-01 10:00 CET, covering the protocol stack, payment rails and agent-payment infrastructure, platform postures (including the US, European, Chinese, Korean, and Latin-American markets), merchant-side tooling, standards-body and agent-identity governance, legal and regulatory boundaries, recent financings and M&A, adoption and traffic metrics, and near-term dated events." }, { "date": "2026-06-11", "edition": 1, "change": "Pre-merge refresh: aligned public references with Poneva canonical URLs, replaced weaker redirected citations with primary sources where available, updated ACP/UCP attribution and source links, and moved Amazon v. Perplexity from scheduled argument to decision watch after the Ninth Circuit hearing." } ], "methodology": { "unit": "dated evidence entry", "scope": "facts that sit on, govern, bound, or measure the chain by which an agent discovers, evaluates, or pays for goods on a person's behalf", "distinction": "state-of-play evidence ledger; adjacent to broad entity directories, not a replacement for them" } }