Shoppers Trust Banks Over Retailers to Let AI Buy

Today’s digital-first shoppers are happy to let artificial intelligence lend an electronic hand as they shop online for everything from clothing to groceries.

However, most are nowhere close to handing over the proverbial AI keys to an Amazon or Instacart.

The rapid development of the technology from a tool that can comparison-shop products into autonomous agents that go one step further and purchase on your behalf is the next stage of eCommerce. AI agents use your bank details, credit or debit card, or digital wallet and follow parameters you pre-set, like spending limits, materials and colors.

Digital marketplaces want shoppers not just to research and compare prices, but to close the deal by allowing agentic AI embedded within a merchant or marketplace platform to click “buy” and complete the purchase.

Nearly 7 in 10 adult consumers in the United States said they would be open to using an AI assistant for at least one of their routine tasks, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence report “From Assistive to Agentic AI: Consumers Wade Into Autonomous Commerce.” Of those, 69% would be at least somewhat comfortable letting AI handle meal planning and grocery shopping, while 63% would let it take care of gift buying.

Shoppers are busy, and 49% of consumers interested in using AI would delegate both routine purchases and large, research-driven purchases to an agentic AI assistant, instead of bouncing back to a merchant’s site or app for payment.

But there’s one big hurdle to that happening en masse. While consumers express interest in delegating chores like grocery shopping and bill management to AI, their willingness to allow agentic AI to pull the buying trigger depends on whether they’re interacting with an established payment system. That means the agentic assistants of traditional banks, credit card networks and digital wallets.

Who Do You Trust?

Unlike retailers and marketplaces that have introduced agentic assistants, traditional financial services systems have built decades of trust with consumers by providing security and oversight for automated purchases.

This suggests that consumers place their trust not so much in agentic AI as a technology but in their ability to supervise and reverse automated buying decisions. Nobody wants an agent to buy the wrong-colored sofa or a parka with broken zippers, and financial services institutions have a long-established playbook for processing returns, reimbursements and refunds.

That’s why shoppers get more cautious with merchants with consumer-facing agentic tools. Among people who use AI within a merchant’s app or website, 58% would rather keep control, using AI to browse, then completing the purchase themselves, rather than letting a merchant’s agent complete the purchase.

In other words, consumers are more likely to trust payment providers than merchants to make autonomous purchases. Among shoppers open to using generative AI (a precursor to agentic that doesn’t have full autonomy or the ability to independently make buying decisions), the most trusted assistants don’t belong to retailers at all. Just over 1 in 4 consumers said they would trust autonomous AI from their digital wallet provider the most, while nearly 1 in 5 said they would trust it when offered by Chase, Bank of America, Discover or another credit card issuer. Just 16% said they would put the most trust in agents offered by the merchants they shop with.

What’s At Stake for Merchants

That hesitation matters for merchants, especially as retailers and marketplaces race to build agentic AI directly into the shopping experience. Take, for instance, grocery giant Kroger. In November, the company announced that it was partnering with Instacart to provide “agentic shopping experiences” for its customers.

“Interacting with an AI agent makes shopping and meal planning as simple as a conversation, helping customers build their basket or offering meal suggestions, truly understanding what matters most to them,” Kroger Executive Vice President and Chief Digital Officer Yael Cosset said in a statement about the announcement.

Retail giant Amazon sits in an interesting spot, thanks to its Amazon Web Services cloud computing platform. Amazon executives are betting that shoppers will eventually come around on agentic commerce.

“It has a chance to be good for customers, has a chance to be really good for eCommerce,” Amazon President and CEO Andy Jassy said during the company’s last earnings call in October.

He added that while Amazon’s marketplace is already great for customers who are shopping with a specific purchase in mind, agentic assistants will be able to play the role that an in-store salesperson would usually take on.

From Etsy’s vantage point, shoppers aren’t fully comfortable with agentic commerce yet, but momentum is building.

During the company’s last earnings call in October, Etsy CEO Kruti Goyal, who was president and chief growth officer at the time, said that while agentic AI accounts for a “small slice of eCommerce traffic” right now, the shoppers who use it tend to come ready to buy. Executive Chairman Josh Silverman, who was also CEO at the time, added that he thinks agentic commerce and traditional in-app shopping will complement each other.

This month, Google announced an open-source protocol that it hopes will become an industry standard used by retailers for their AI agents, allowing retailers to sidestep building their own agentic systems from scratch or buying them from software companies.

In theory, agentic-powered commerce is the next logical step, considering how many consumers are already embracing the technology. The December edition of PYMNTS Intelligence’s Agentic AI Report found that 64% of U.S. adult consumers said they used AI for work, personal tasks or both in the previous year.

“This is going to be a paradigm shift in how commerce is done,” Mastercard Chief Digital Officer Pablo Fourez told PYMNTS in October. “It’s probably a bigger shift than the move to mobile because it’s not just about how you pay, it’s about the entire commerce experience.”

In practice, things aren’t there yet.

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