The world of e-commerce continues to move forward. One of the latest trends starting to gain traction is the emergence of agentic commerce. While we usually have to bother searching for products, comparing prices, reading reviews, and then completing payments manually, now most of these steps can be carried out automatically by AI-based systems.
For consumers, this is a clear advantage—the shopping process is faster, recommendations are more tailored to their needs, and the effort required is significantly reduced. But on the other hand, new challenges arise: how secure is our data, what about privacy, and to what extent can we trust technology to make decisions on our behalf? As more people and companies experiment with agentic commerce, its benefits and risks become increasingly clear.
What is Agentic Commerce?
Simply put, what is agentic commerce? It’s a shopping model in which an AI-powered digital agent acts like a personal assistant, shopping for you. This agent can understand your preferences, analyze various products, and complete transactions. Instead of having to compare ten types of phones yourself, an AI agent does it in seconds and gives you the best recommendations.
Unlike traditional automation, this shopping model doesn’t just complete tasks. It can understand your shopping style, consider your budget, and adjust your priorities before making decisions that feel natural.
There are three main characteristics typically emphasized in this concept:
- Efficiency – shopping becomes faster because repetitive tasks are eliminated.
- Personalization – results are truly tailored to each individual’s preferences.
- Autonomy – AI agents can work with minimal human intervention.
In short, this type of e-commerce is like having a personal shopper who truly understands your needs—the difference is, it’s not a human doing the work, but an algorithm.
How Agentic Commerce Works?
The core engine behind agentic commerce is a combination of artificial intelligence, data analytics, and a secure payment system. A simple overview is as follows:
- Collecting preferences – AI learns from your shopping history, browsing habits, and even your lifestyle data.
- Searching for products – you no longer have to browse through various online stores; AI does the work.
- Analysis – everything from price, features, shipping times, and customer reviews are calculated in an instant.
- Choosing the best options – AI filters products based on your specified rules, such as “price under Rp 3 million” or “eco-friendly brands.”
- Payment processing – Once you agree, AI will apply coupons, process payments, and arrange shipping.
While in traditional e-commerce you retain full control at every step, in this trend your role is more focused on the initial stages, while the system automatically executes. This saves time, yes. But on the other hand, you also hand over some responsibility to AI.
Why Agentic Commerce is Growing Rapidly
There are several reasons why agentic commerce is gaining so much popularity:
- Consumer needs: People want a fast, easy, and personalized shopping experience. Manual processes feel outdated.
- Familiarity with digital assistants: We’re already used to Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant. Bringing this experience to online shopping is a natural progression.
- Business benefits: Companies can improve customer satisfaction, drive conversions, and build loyalty.
- Mature technology: AI, natural language processing, and increasingly secure digital payments make this model viable, not just an experiment.
In fact, financial companies are starting to integrate direct payment systems with AI agents through networks like Visa. The result is faster, more secure transactions, and a reduced risk of shopping cart abandonment.
The term Visa agentic commerce visa refers to a new concept and product from Visa that allows AI agents (intelligent virtual assistants) to perform shopping or transaction activities on behalf of users, within the boundaries defined by the users themselves.
Visa introduced the Visa Intelligent Commerce platform, which provides infrastructure for developers, AI agents, merchants, and financial institutions so that transactions carried out by AI agents can:
- Safe and reliable; for example, using tokenization so that card data is not directly used or exposed
- Users still have control: setting spending limits, the types of stores or merchants the agent can access, and authentication to approve when the AI agent makes a purchase.
- Protection against fraud, data privacy, and dispute resolution because all transactions remain within the Visa payment network which already has a security mechanism.
- Additional features for developers and merchants, such as tools to connect AI agents to the Visa network, no-code tools for creating invoices, creating payment links, transaction analytics, etc.
Benefits and Risks
This form of commerce carries both benefits and risks, such as the following;
Benefits:
- Simplifies the shopping experience: users can “ask” an AI agent, eliminating the need to handle all the steps from searching, selecting, to paying.
- More efficient and personal: AI agents can learn user preferences, saving time and effort.
- Potential reduction in security risks due to modern tokenization and authentication.
Risks:
- Data privacy: For AI agents to work optimally, they typically need data about previous transactions, preferences, etc. Users need to be confident that this data is being managed properly.
- Security: even with controls in place, AI agents can be misused if there are no clear guardrails (rules/limits) in place.
- Regulation: as automated transactions may raise legal or regulatory questions in some countries regarding the use of AI, digital identity, consumer protection.
- Trust: users and merchants must trust that the system works as promised, and that errors or abuse can be handled.
However, this growth also opens up opportunities. Without a robust security system, the convenience offered can be exploited by fraudsters.
How Fraudsters Exploit Agentic Commerce
As always, whenever new technology emerges, fraudsters are always looking for ways to capitalize. In this digital commerce model, there are several common methods:
- Fake listings – they create convincing-looking product pages, complete with attractive images and fake reviews. AI agents focused on price and specifications can be fooled into recommending these products.
- Account takeover – if fraudsters successfully steal login credentials, they can direct AI agents to make unauthorized purchases. Because the shopping process is automated, the losses can be substantial and rapid.
- Weak ID checks – on platforms with lax identity checks, fraudsters can easily create fake accounts or impersonate other users. From there, they can access personal data or approve transactions.
- Subscription abuse – AI agents are often used to manage subscription services. Fraudsters can exploit this vulnerability to extend subscriptions with stolen cards or trick consumers into paying for services they never intended.
Keypaz: Building Trust for Seamless Agentic Commerce
For agentic commerce to truly survive in the long term, trust is key. Consumers must be confident that their data is secure and that AI decisions are truly in their best interests.
This is where companies like Keypaz come in. They focus on providing security without sacrificing user experience, emphasizing:
- Stricter identity verification.
- Real-time fraud detection.
- A seamless user experience despite the added security layer.
By balancing convenience and protection, Keypaz helps consumers and businesses feel more confident using this innovation. The goal is not only to reduce fraud but also to build a safe and trustworthy AI-based shopping ecosystem.
Also Read: Retail Fraud Stopped: How Keypaz Secured the Industry
If the security foundation is strong, agentic commerce has great potential to become the new face of online shopping: faster, smarter, and of course, safer.