Agentic Friday
The Future of Frictionless Commerce
A fun thing to do in the days after Thanksgiving is to log-in to payment company dashboards and watch the world shop live. As of this writing, Shopify has ushered 24 million unique shoppers through its platform since Black Friday commenced; Stripe has processed 92 million transactions. Tariffs may be eroding discounts on offer, but consumers are undeterred. At this rate, both firms look set to exceed records they achieved over Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend last year, when Shopify hit peak sales of $4.6 million per minute and Stripe did total transaction volume of $31 billion.
What makes this year different is that both companies will have AI agents wandering through their pipes alongside regular human users. Shopify has already seen AI-driven traffic to its stores increase seven-fold since January, with orders attributed to AI searches increasing by 11x. That is only likely to grow. According to a recent survey conducted by Bain, 17% of US consumers say they’ll start their online holiday shopping this year with ChatGPT, Perplexity or another general AI assistant. Although lower than the 73% who still start with Amazon, it’s a share that is only going up.
It also reflects a new way of shopping. AI is already used widely for research and product comparison. As AI assistants integrate these features with search, they are additionally being used by consumers as a marketplace. Ultimately, we’re heading for a world in which AI should be able to navigate shopping options, negotiate deals and execute transactions independently of human direction. “Find me a pair of waterproof hiking boots in a size 8 under $150 that can be delivered by Friday,” could be something you would ask, and the agent would be able to scan available options, query product data in real time, check return policies, read shipping estimates, verify availability and place the order.
“We’re entering what is likely to be a whole new era of agentic commerce,” Shopify president Harley Finkelstein told investors earlier this month. His CEO, Tobi Lütke, is similarly bullish. Agentic commerce “will be done a lot and might even be a majority of commerce on the internet,” he told John Collison, president of Stripe. Amazon’s Andy Jassy goes further: “I do think that the exciting part of this, and the promise, is that AI and agentic commerce solutions are going to expand the amount of shopping that happens online.”
In a recent report, McKinsey puts some numbers around it. By 2030, its consultants estimate the US business-to-consumer retail market alone could see up to $1 trillion in orchestrated revenue from agentic commerce, with global projections as high as $3 trillion to $5 trillion. Payment platform Adyen comes in a little lower, at €2 trillion ($2.3 trillion) by 2030, but the direction of travel is clear.
With numbers like these, it’s no surprise that agentic commerce dominated recent earnings calls across the payments and e-commerce sectors. The companies positioning themselves to capitalize on this shift are making strategic moves that could reshape the entire e-commerce ecosystem. To explore what they are up to and which players stand to win or lose, read on.
As a reminder, I am hosting a webinar with Sayonton Roy of Citigroup on December 4th to discuss private credit — a theme we have talked about here many times before. On his recent earnings call, founder of alternative asset firm Blue Owl said fears of ruptures in private credit are “like the Mandela effect of finance... just common population collective misimpression of what’s going on.” Is he right? Register here.
