Agentic commerce: all change for payments?

Today all transactions are initiated by consumers. Browsing on websites or via app, consumers make a decision about what to buy and how to pay. However, our new study with Celent predicts a future in which customers will deploy AI agents capable of initiating transactions on their behalf.

We expect the value of e-commerce initiated by agents to hit reach €191 billion by 2035.

While this might sound like sci-fi, models are currently under development, such as Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP), that aim to create AI agents which connect, communicate, and execute transactions.

In recent months, payment and technology giants such as Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, and AWS have made significant announcements about their efforts to develop a-commerce agents. Our new report doesn’t foresee any material impact on payment volumes in the next few years, since robust mechanisms for delegation and control, an agent trust infrastructure and clear liability frameworks all need to be developed.

 
However, we do expect the value of e-commerce initiated by fully-autonomous agents will reach €191 billion across major European markets, or 17.5% of all e-commerce, by 2035. We anticipate the strongest impact in areas such as travel, food and drink, financial services, and digital media. In all these areas, there are clear use cases for a customer to ask an agent to purchase items required to meet a stated outcome such as ingredients for a recipe, DIY materials for a project, or a book or film.

Agentic commerce agents could power 1 in 5 transactions by 2035

What this means for banks

The rise of a-commerce is another reason for banks to anticipate very fast increases in online volumes over the next decade. AML and fraud protections will need to be more robust and this, coupled with developments required by the introduction of the agents themselves, means banks should be looking for maximum flexibility and capability from their payment platforms. Examples of the kinds of flexibility we anticipate include managing user consents for agents; how banks can onboard agents, and issuing encrypted keys for secure communication with them. Banks will also need to acquire the skills and governance frameworks for managing agents in-house.

 
Banks will face a choice about when to enter this market, and how. While it’s likely that the first banks to offer agents will gain significant early-mover advantage, they could also face risks associated with fraud losses and possible reputation risks – not to mention competition from fintechs. Although such questions may appear distant today, the pace of development in the digital revolution suggests banks should be preparing now.

To find out more about future changes in European payments, download our latest report.