Autonomous Agents Challenge Retailers to Earn Trust

For decades, retailers have chased the holy grail of frictionless commerce.

“Buy in one click” became a shorthand for the ideal shopping experience: instant, invisible, effortless. This required compressing the distance between desire and purchase, removing steps, and, if possible, turning every moment into a shoppable one.

But that era is already coming to a close, thanks to the rise of agentic AI. Findings in the November 2025 Payments Orchestration Tracker® Series, a PYMNTS Intelligence collaboration with Spreedly, reveal that AI agents, autonomous systems that shop on consumers’ behalf, are poised to take convenience to its logical endpoint.

This emerging next wave of digital commerce won’t require clicks at all. Consumers will define an outcome, like, “keep me stocked,” “find me the best deal under $50,” “buy a replacement when this is about to expire,” and an agent will simply make it happen.

The question isn’t whether this capability will exist. It’s how retailers will make consumers feel comfortable using it.

And that’s not an impossible challenge. In fact, the path forward is achievable with deliberate design and clearer than the hype suggests.

Consumers rarely shop in straight lines. They respond to moods, moments, small impulses, social cues, and personal preferences that shift from week to week. They browse aspirationally, comparison-shop for reassurance, and splurge unpredictably. They buy some things purely on habit and others only after a deep emotional assessment.

That’s why a first step can be ensuring any agentic AI systems interpret consumer intent as dynamic and contextual. A system that understands “keep my pantry stocked” should also recognize that brands, budgets, or diet preferences might change; that a sale might justify a bigger order; that a holiday requires more variety; and that certain items still require human approval.

After all, consumers don’t need to control every step of an automated process to trust it. They just need to understand what is happening and why.

The report found that four in five consumers (80%) are more inclined to make purchases when brands provide a personalized experience, making agentic AI systems that are framed as collaborative partners rather than rigid executors potentially more attractive.

Read the report: AI’s New Age: Building Human Intent and Trust Into Agentic AI

Still, one of the most important shifts required to make agentic retail viable is redefining what “control” means for consumers. Control does not require manually approving every action. It requires having the authority to set boundaries, adjust behavior, pause activity, and reverse decisions when needed.

In practice, this means giving consumers the ability to shape agent autonomy on their terms. Some shoppers will want agents that suggest but never buy. Others will want agents that complete specific categories of recurring purchases. Some will delegate routine tasks entirely but maintain manual control over discretionary or emotionally driven categories like fashion, gifts, or beauty.

The goal is not to automate everything; it is to automate the parts of shopping consumers are most willing to offload, without intruding on the parts they still enjoy. Agentic functionality will succeed when it blends into familiar environments rather than asking shoppers to adopt new behaviors.

This continuity helps consumers see agentic systems not as a radical shift, but as an evolution of tools they already trust. Meeting customers where they are reduces friction and accelerates adoption far more effectively than dazzling them with novelty.

Ultimately, consumers are unlikely to demand that AI agents never make mistakes. They may just, however, demand that mistakes be fixable, understandable, and infrequent. The paradox of automation is that consumers feel safest when they know they can step in at any time — even if they rarely need to.

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