In the age of AI-driven commerce, the concept of agentic payments is transforming the way buying and selling occur online. Instead of a customer manually browsing, comparing, and checking out, intelligent agents, powered by machine learning and large language models, act on the consumer's behalf to discover, negotiate, and complete purchases. This shift represents a major evolution from traditional e-commerce toward an agentic commerce ecosystem, where trusted digital agents handle everything from product discovery to payment.
For merchants, enabling this new mode of interaction means more than just offering APIs or digital storefronts; it also involves providing seamless integration with existing systems. It involves creating the technical, trustworthy infrastructure that allows agents to seamlessly access product data, verify pricing, authorize payments, and confirm delivery, all while ensuring the appropriate level of compliance. By building systems that speak the same language as autonomous agents, merchants can open new channels for frictionless commerce and capture customers who increasingly rely on AI to manage their purchasing decisions.
But what should a merchant be doing to enable agentic transactions today?
I spoke with our CEO, Chuck Yu, to ask him for advice on what he would recommend to merchants looking to navigate agentic commerce and develop their own internal strategy. Below are the three pieces of advice he gives to merchants today:
Read, Read, Read. A merchant should stay informed about developments in agent-based commerce. Whether it's a new protocol or a trending topic, merchants shouldn't just react to the news but educate themselves on how to enable agentic commerce, creating a seamless customer journey for transactions to occur.
Spend the rest of the year being in “learn” mode.
Today, focus on answering: What are you going to react to and build?
When merchants educate themselves on what is happening in agentic commerce, they can be better prepared to react and strategize on what a successful product roadmap would look like. From there, merchants are prepared to build a solution that is a success.
Spend Q1 2026 on actually designing the Product Roadmap for Q2 2026.
Make way for building when the time is right.
Once you have identified a product roadmap, ensure that your engineering resources are freed up to start building in Q2 2026.
Conclusion
There is a natural instinct for merchants to start building solutions that enable agentic commerce immediately. Our advice is to spend the rest of 2025 learning and reading, and building an informed perspective on the right thing for your business. Enter into 2026 ready to build your product roadmap, and clear out the rest of the year for engineering resources to build and integrate.
Are you a merchant building your agentic commerce strategy? Talk to VGS to see how we can help you.
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