By Shawn Conahan, Chief Revenue Officer, Wildfire Systems
Agentic AI – autonomous digital agents that act on behalf of consumers – will rapidly reshape how people shop, save, and manage their finances. Agentic shopping, the next chapter in digital commerce, will invert the traditional online shopping model, and basically eliminate the often friction-filled checkout process.
For fintechs and financial institutions, the arrival of agentic shopping demands immediate strategic action to embed AI-powered commerce and redefine customer value.
The disappearance of the cart
Agentic shopping is defined by AI tools gaining the agency to act autonomously, often making purchases on the consumer’s behalf with minimal human involvement. Instead of consumers actively hunting for offers or rewards, shopping agents function independently, efficiently comparing prices, sourcing the best deals, and optimizing payment methods without human intervention.
The core value proposition of a shopping agent is frictionless convenience. This capability is already being demonstrated by the integration between Perplexity and PayPal, a partnership that will enable transactions to be executed entirely within the chat interface. The agent handles the frequently annoying steps of checkout, programmatically: navigating forms and applying stored payment credentials before an equivalent human-facing checkout page could even load.
The implications for the payment ecosystem are massive. Why? Because the payment experience becomes effectively invisible, embedded directly into the user’s conversation with the agent. While incumbent networks like Visa are moving rapidly to embed their payment rails into AI tools using secure tokenized credentials, there is a non-zero risk of disintermediation if agents choose optimal payment rails such as ACH, RTP, or crypto based purely on value to the consumer.
To retain primacy and stay top-of-wallet, payment providers must convey not only transaction mechanics to an AI agent, but also the advantages of selecting their payment method, and where possible, specifically highlighting rewards and benefits. This is because agents are aligned with the consumer’s best interests: finding the right product at the best price.
Trust, transparency, and control: The adoption imperative
While the technology for agentic shopping is arriving, mass adoption is contingent upon overcoming fundamental consumer concerns related to trust. Edgar, Dunn, and Company estimates that agentic AI commerce revenue is projected to grow to a staggering $1.7 trillion by 2030; however, consumers are not yet ready to fully outsource their purchases.
Wildfire’s 2025 report on consumer shopping trends, The AI Shopping Shift, confirmed that trust, transparency, and control are essential requirements for mass adoption of agentic shopping:
- Trust and Protection: Consumers have significant concerns about fully delegating purchases to agents. The top concern cited by respondents was data privacy (49%), followed by fear of being tied into unwanted subscriptions (44%). Nearly one in five respondents wanted their bank or card issuer to offer fraud protection specifically for AI purchases, confirming that providers must offer consumers protections to address and alleviate fears.
- Value and Incentives: Consumers are pragmatic, and trust is directly tied to measurable value exchange. A majority of AI shoppers (75%) agreed they would trust AI recommendations more if they received something back, such as cashback or a bonus. Furthermore, money-saving benefits would motivate 86% of respondents to consider using an agent.
- Control and Low-Stakes Entry: Building confidence starts small. More than half of consumers (61%) are comfortable delegating purchases under $20, but comfort levels drop steeply for transactions over $500 (19%). To evolve trust for higher-stakes transactions, consumers must be given control, such as setting a spending allowance that the agent cannot exceed. Transparency can be built by allowing users to validate AI recommendations, verify sources, or seamlessly escalate to human support.
Loyalty and monetization anchor the future
In this agentic world, value will win. Shopping agents do not have eyeballs or emotions, so traditional marketing spend on display ads and pay-per-click to capture human attention will instead shift toward performance-based models such as affiliate marketing and revenue sharing. This performance-driven environment elevates merchant-funded loyalty and rewards programs as a key lever for offering more consumer value on purchases.
Monetization will inevitably run through the loyalty ecosystem because financial services organizations generally have the highest value loyalty programs globally. An Ipsos report found that 71% of consumers have a rewards/cashback credit card and 80% of them value the rewards they get and Salesforce found that 70% of shoppers express interest in AI agents that help optimize loyalty points. These studies point to the importance of r agentic platforms to tap into existing loyalty pathways.
Fintechs and banks should move now to embed AI-powered commerce into wallets, super apps, and banking platforms. The strategic imperative is clear: prepare integration paths, lead with customer value and robust trust infrastructure, and leverage loyalty as the strategic anchor to capture growth in the next era of agentic consumer engagement.
About the author
At Wildfire, Shawn Conahan develops strategic partnerships with major finance, banking, and fintech companies to enable the creation of new revenue streams and modernizing their customer experience to position them competitively for the future of banking and money. He has been an entrepreneur, senior executive and investor in the wireless, technology and Internet industries for over 15 years, having previously built and sold three companies. His industry experience ranges from digital media to wireless technology to big data where the common thread has been building platforms with broad applicability.
