Agentic Commerce Fails to Disrupt Traditional Payment Methods

Agentic commerce is still in its infancy, accounting for less than 1% of total e-commerce activity. Despite this, several major players have recently launched AI shopping tools, including Meta's Muse and Anthropic's Commerce Agents.

Muse is a personal AI agent capable of autonomously executing tasks such as email, travel booking, and project management, while Commerce Agents is an open-source framework designed to help companies build consumer shopping agents. A messaging-first personal AI agent called Instinct has also gained popularity in Silicon Valley.

Analysts at Bernstein argue that agentic commerce poses no threat to traditional payment methods like Visa and Mastercard, citing the benefits of digitization, transactions, and value-added services. In fact, cards will remain the preferred payment method in the agentic world due to their dispute management capabilities and widespread adoption.

Currently, none of the recent agent launches seek to control merchant payments, instead offering frictionless ways for consumers to execute purchases. Visa and Mastercard have developed their own agentic tokens and standards, including Trusted Agent Protocol and Verifiable Intent.