We arrange a sales space at Stripe Periods 2026 and requested 225 commerce leaders the place agentic commerce is headed. Software program and SaaS builders, company founders, manufacturers, retailers, buyers, and media professionals responded.
Three issues stood out:
- Client belief was the one factor everybody agreed on.
- Discovery shifts first.
- Nobody is aware of but who owns the client relationship.
One factor to remember: most respondents work on the infrastructure of commerce, not the storefronts. Software program, platform, and SaaS firms made up 60% of the pattern. Companies and consultancies added one other 12%. Manufacturers and retailers had been 7%, buyers 4%, and the remainder got here from media and varied write-in industries.
We’re largely listening to from the individuals who construct the rails. The model and retailer responses give us the operator’s view, and I’ll flag the place they see issues otherwise.
We requested respondents to choose the 2 components that may matter most in agentic commerce. The choices had been client belief, open protocols, fee infrastructure, regulation, and AI high quality.
The commonest pairing was client belief and fee infrastructure, named by 24% of respondents.
Client belief confirmed up in 4 of the 5 commonest pairings, however the second issue cut up alongside business strains.
- 6% paired belief with AI high quality: a guess that the mannequin itself is the deciding issue. If an AI agent recommends or buys the fallacious factor, the rails don’t matter.
- 12% paired belief with open protocols or fee infrastructure: a guess on the rails. Get these proper, and the remainder follows.
- 11% paired belief with regulation: a deal with legal responsibility. When an agent buys one thing in your behalf, who’s accountable when one thing goes fallacious?
Belief ran by each mixture. The bets diverge on what comes second.
Once we requested which a part of commerce will likely be most disrupted by AI brokers over the subsequent 3 years, search and discovery topped the listing at 26%. Ecommerce platforms got here in proper behind, at 24%. Promoting and paid acquisition adopted at 17%.
Respondents count on AI to vary how buyers discover merchandise earlier than it modifications how they purchase them. The Visa April B2AI survey backs this up: solely 38% of shoppers are snug with an AI agent finishing a purchase order, and 60% wouldn’t let an agent spend any quantity with out prior approval. So, buyers are nonetheless those finishing purchases for now.
If your small business is determined by demand era, the timeline is shorter. If it is determined by checkout, there’s extra runway, however the identical shift is coming.
Model and retailer respondents picked promoting as probably the most disrupted class. The folks paying for advertisements count on advert spend to reshape first. The broader viewers — which sells search engine marketing, content material, and platform providers — sees its personal market shifting first. Each are legitimate interpretations. They’re simply totally different hyperlinks in the identical chain.
Of all of the questions we requested, this one had the least settlement — and arguably the most important strategic stakes.
A 32/28 cut up, with one other 29% mixed in “too early” or “shared/undefined,” will not be a winner. It’s contested territory. And amongst manufacturers and retailers particularly (the folks whose buyer relationships are literally at stake), “too early to say” was the highest reply.
AI brokers have gotten a commerce channel. Discovery, suggestions, and in some instances, initiating a purchase order. That’s already occurring. However retailers nonetheless personal achievement, returns, the assist queue, the loyalty program, and the follow-up e-mail. The connection, principally.
It’s much like promoting on marketplaces. Retailers who saved their very own buyer relationships did effective when market phrases modified. Those who let {the marketplace} personal all the pieces — the client information, the acquisition historical past, the entire relationship — discovered that these prospects belonged to the platform, to not them.
The identical factor is occurring with AI brokers, and the principles aren’t written but. Who owns buyer and operational information isn’t locked down.
Model nonetheless issues right here, too. An AI agent recommending merchandise makes use of indicators akin to what a buyer has purchased, what they favored, and which shops they return to. A model that has genuinely earned somebody’s belief is less complicated to suggest confidently. A forgettable one is more durable to tell apart from the competitors.
Individuals will hand off extra routine buying to AI over time. However what they purchase nonetheless says one thing about who they’re. That half doesn’t get delegated so simply.
Retail respondents are investing actual assets in being discovered by AI, even whereas admitting they don’t know what 2027 will seem like. Over 7 in 10 mentioned they’re actively investing in LLM discovery and site visitors.
Once we requested the identical group to forecast what share of 2027 gross sales will come from AI-discovered buyers or be accomplished by an agent, the dominant reply was: “We don’t know but.”
Respondents who did choose a quantity ranged from underneath 5%–30%+, with 5%–15% the most typical vary. There’s no consensus on the dimensions of the shift; solely that it’s coming.
Retailers now have two audiences to succeed in: people who browse and select, and AI brokers that filter and suggest. The brokers will work together together with your programs — from product information and APIs to structured content material and your checkout reliability — not your design or conversion circulation.
Which means the foundations are exceedingly essential. Product information that’s incomplete or outdated doesn’t simply frustrate buyers; it means your merchandise don’t get surfaced in any respect. Schema markup, structured attributes, and descriptions that work for each people and machines are actually the baseline.
Your content material and retailer additionally have to dwell on the identical platform. AI brokers learn and cite shopping for guides, Q&As, and comparability pages. In case your content material lives on a separate system out of your retailer, each turn out to be more durable to parse. WooCommerce runs on WordPress, so these programs are already related.
The protocol panorama remains to be being written. This isn’t the second to lock in a single guess.
WooCommerce is constructed on the precept that retailers ought to have the ability to lengthen, combine, and adapt their retailer with out asking permission.
Closed platforms choose a protocol (or construct a proprietary one), and your retailer goes the place they go. The integrations you’ll be able to entry, the brokers your retailer can discuss to, the AI workflows out there to you: all of it runs by their roadmap, on their timeline, at their value. That’s a manageable tradeoff in a steady atmosphere. However this isn’t a steady atmosphere.
Open platforms can assist a number of protocols. When a brand new protocol features traction, it will get added. When one fades, you’re not locked into it. Your retailer connects to regardless of the ecosystem produces, not simply what one vendor chooses to assist.
AI can be making open platforms simpler to construct on than they’ve ever been. The standard tradeoff — energy and suppleness at the price of complexity — is shrinking. The pace benefit closed platforms used to have is eroding.
In the meantime, closed platforms are shifting in the other way. Charges are going up. Ecosystems are getting tighter. Roadmap selections are made in a black field. That will get more durable to get well from the longer it goes on. And the protocol panorama is just too unsure and shifting too quick for any single vendor to make all the correct calls.
MCP is dwell now. Mannequin Context Protocol is how AI assistants connect with and function software program. Consider it because the layer that lets an AI truly do issues in your retailer, not simply reply questions on it. With WooCommerce 10.7, that connection is dwell. An AI assistant can now learn your stock, lookup orders, and handle merchandise straight, with out copy-pasting or customized integrations.
Stripe’s Agentic Commerce Protocol integration is constructed. Woo can be a launch accomplice for Stripe’s Agentic Commerce Suite. The plumbing — catalog sync, checkout, order mapping, and stock — is essentially executed. As Stripe’s agentic roadmap evolves, we’ll evolve with it.
The structure helps what comes subsequent. As new protocols emerge, Woo can add assist for them with out retailers having to modify platforms or rebuild something. The work occurs on the platform stage, not the shop stage.
No person left Stripe Periods with a 2027 forecast. However most individuals had decided about what sort of basis they had been constructing on. That’s in all probability the place most retailers are proper now, too.
Tamara Niesen is the Chief Advertising Officer at Woo. With over 20 years of expertise in high-growth B2B SaaS, gadget, and platform firms, Tamara has led groups targeted on model, go-to-market, demand era, product advertising and marketing, accomplice advertising and marketing, built-in lifecycle advertising and marketing, and efficiency advertising and marketing.
She beforehand led World Demand Era and Go-to-Market at Shopify, driving income development and market growth for Shopify Plus. She has additionally held advertising and marketing management roles at Housecall Professional, D2L, and BlackBerry. Tamara resides in Waterloo, Ontario.
