Agentic shopping takes shape

American Express said on April 14 it is rolling out tools that let registered artificial intelligence agents shop and pay for card members, with new protection if an agent makes a mistake. (americanexpress.com) The company’s new Agentic Commerce Experiences, or ACE, developer kit is aimed at software builders that want an assistant to search, choose and complete a purchase on the American Express network. American Express said the system is built around authentication, intent and visibility into agent-initiated transactions. (americanexpress.com) (digitalcommerce360.com) American Express also introduced Amex Agent Purchase Protection, which the company described as a first-of-its-kind commitment for purchases made by registered agents. The protection covers cases where a card member authorized an agent but the agent bought the wrong item, duplicated an order or made another unintended purchase. (americanexpress.com) (msn.com) Agentic shopping means software acts more like a concierge than a search box: a person sets the goal, and the assistant can compare options and check out. Payments companies are now trying to build the rules and safeguards for that handoff before the behavior becomes common. (mastercard.com) (americanexpress.com) American Express is not alone in that push. Mastercard introduced Agent Pay in 2025 as an agentic payments program tied to tokenization and identity checks, framing the market as one where trusted agents need merchant and network-level verification. (businesswire.com) (mastercard.com) The same shift is reaching the advertising side of retail. Pacvue said on April 14 that its new Pacvue Agent can recommend and carry out governed actions for Amazon Ads campaigns inside its commerce media software. (pacvue.com) Pacvue said the product launches first for Amazon Ads and will expand to more retailers and formats through 2026. The company said brands using the system can move from analysis to execution in one workflow, with claims of up to 200 times faster workflows, up to 80 times faster time to insight and up to 54 percent better performance. (pacvue.com) (marketwatch.com) The commercial pitch is speed, but the technical problem is permission. American Express is limiting its protection to registered agents, which gives the network a way to tie a transaction to a known developer and a recorded user authorization. (americanexpress.com) (digitalcommerce360.com) Forecasts for the category are still early, but the spending targets are getting large. Juniper Research said last week that agentic commerce spend could reach $1.5 trillion globally by 2030, starting from pilot deployments in 2025 and 2026. (businessinsider.com) The immediate test is whether shoppers trust a bot to do more than browse. American Express is betting that if the network absorbs some of the risk when agents go wrong, people will let software move from recommending products to actually buying them. (americanexpress.com) (aol.com)