AI is moving in—agentic commerce and cashierless checkout
Retailers are rolling out 'agentic' AI—bots that handle routine customer tasks—while Gap announced a Gemini-powered checkout pilot, signaling faster automation on store floors and online. Analysts say this will shift human roles toward complex, high-empathy service rather than replace frontline expertise outright. (cnbc.com) (bain.com) (forbes.com)
Gap said shoppers will be able to complete purchases from its family of brands — Gap Inc., which owns Old Navy, Banana Republic and Athleta — directly inside Google’s Gemini, with payment routed through Google Pay and fulfillment handled by Gap. (finance.yahoo.com)) Gap will feed product details to Gemini (rather than letting the model crawl its site) so the retailer controls accuracy, and the company told CNBC the feature is still testing with rollout expected “imminently,” while a Bold Metrics sizing tool will also launch to surface fit recommendations. (cnbc.com)) Google publicly launched the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) on Jan. 11, 2026 as an open standard to let agents, merchants and payment providers interoperate, and Google said UCP will power native checkout inside AI Mode and the Gemini app using Google Pay and saved Wallet credentials. (developers.googleblog.com)) OpenAI’s earlier Instant Checkout rollout and reports that Shopify merchants would face a roughly 4% fee on ChatGPT checkout sales have crystallized the commercial stakes for platforms vs. merchants, with multiple outlets reporting the 4% transaction charge for sales processed inside ChatGPT. (pymnts.com)) Bain’s November 2025 analysis found roughly half of consumers remain uneasy about fully autonomous end‑to‑end AI purchases and that 30–45% of U.S. shoppers already use generative AI for product research, leading Bain to advise retailers to weigh open vs. closed agent ecosystems or build proprietary agents to retain control. (bain.com)) Retailers from Target and Walmart to Shopify partners and Best Buy were named as early collaborators or adopters in Google’s UCP discussions, and industry analysts including Forrester argue companies must invest in foundational data, fulfillment and governance systems to avoid the operational failures seen in early agentic shopping pilots. (corporate.target.com))
