Two years ago, a shopper researching a new pair of running shoes might have started on Google, clicked through a few retailer websites and eventually checked out on Amazon.
Now they ask artificial intelligence chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude. At least, they do if they are in the United Arab Emirates or Brazil, according to new data from PYMNTS Intelligence and Visa Acceptance Solutions.
The report “Global Digital Shopping Index: The AI-Powered Shopper Has Arrived” found that consumers in the UAE and Brazil are adopting AI shopping tools, mobile commerce and digital payments faster than their counterparts in the United States. But the findings, based on surveys of more than 5,800 consumers and 1,100 merchants across the U.S., Brazil and the UAE, also revealed that retailers are becoming more cautious about digital innovation just as shoppers begin to embrace AI-assisted commerce and mobile-first buying habits.
The number of digital features merchants said they have “no plans” to offer has reached a four-year high. Only 37% of retailers surveyed said they plan to add or improve AI shopping assistants during the next three years. Just 16% said they plan to invest in stored credentials or biometric authentication, despite growing consumer demand for frictionless checkout experiences.
At the same time, nearly half of online shoppers globally said they used AI as part of their most recent purchase journey.
This growing mismatch may become one of the defining tensions of the next phase of commerce.
The Future of AI-Powered Commerce Arrived First in the UAE
No market in the study illustrated the shift more clearly than the UAE. Consumers there averaged 69 digital shopping days per month, compared with 67 in Brazil and just 51 in the U.S. Nearly three-quarters of UAE consumers who made their last purchase online said they used AI somewhere in the shopping journey, above Brazil’s 53% and the U.S.’s 46%.
The country’s lead extends beyond AI, with 92% of UAE consumers reporting that they used tap to pay during their most recent in-store purchase, compared with 69% in Brazil and 56% in the U.S. The report found that 86% said payment acceptance influenced where they chose to shop, underscoring how closely payments and commerce have become intertwined.
Switching hemispheres over to the Americas, the report found that Brazil occupies an especially interesting position in the data. Long viewed as a market still modernizing its retail infrastructure, Brazil now outperforms the U.S. across many of the metrics most closely associated with the future of commerce.
Brazilian consumers shop digitally more frequently, use AI more often during purchase journeys and rely on contactless payments at higher rates than U.S. consumers.
Read the report: Global Digital Shopping Index: The AI-Powered Shopper Has Arrived
The pattern highlighted a phenomenon increasingly familiar in financial services and payments. Countries without decades of legacy infrastructure often move faster when new technologies emerge. Rather than upgrading existing systems, merchants and consumers can adopt newer behaviors more quickly.
Mature commerce markets often face a different challenge than emerging ones: their own legacy successes. Existing payment systems, established shopping habits and fragmented retail infrastructure can make transformation slower, even when new technologies are widely available.
U.S. consumers recorded the lowest number of digital shopping days among the three countries surveyed. They were also the least likely to use AI during online purchases and among the least likely to use tap to pay during in-store transactions.
The risk for U.S. retailers is not that AI commerce arrives too slowly. It’s that it arrives elsewhere first, and U.S. merchants once again find themselves trying to catch up to behaviors consumers have already embraced. That reality creates a difficult question for merchants. If consumers are moving toward AI-assisted shopping faster than retailers are modernizing their digital experiences, who will control the next generation of customer relationships?
The next battle in commerce may no longer be fought over storefront traffic or app downloads, but over which merchants remain visible once AI becomes the primary interface between consumers and the internet.
For all PYMNTS AI coverage, subscribe to the daily AI Newsletter.
At PYMNTS Intelligence, we work with businesses to uncover insights that fuel intelligent, data-driven discussions on changing customer expectations, a more connected economy and the strategic shifts necessary to achieve outcomes. With rigorous research methodologies and unwavering commitment to objective quality, we offer trusted data to grow your business. As our partner, you’ll have access to our diverse team of PhDs, researchers, data analysts, number crunchers, subject matter veterans and editorial experts.
