Agentic Commerce Statistics 2026
By Axis Intelligence Research
Co-authors: Alex Rivera & Sarah Mitchell & Simplice Fosso | Last updated: July 9, 2026 | License: CC BY 4.0
AI agents are making purchase decisions—or strongly influencing them—at a scale that would have seemed implausible eighteen months ago. During Cyber Week 2025 alone, Salesforce recorded AI and agents influencing $67 billion in global sales across 336.6 billion in total spend, touching one in five orders worldwide. On Shopify’s platform in Q1 2026, orders from AI-powered searches arrived at nearly 13 times the year-prior volume. And according to Gartner, 90% of all B2B purchases will run through AI agents by 2028, routing more than $15 trillion through machine-to-machine exchanges. The infrastructure—protocols, payments, identity—is still catching up to the demand. That gap is the defining story of agentic commerce in 2026.
Quick Answer: What Are the Key Agentic Commerce Statistics for 2026?
AI platforms account for an estimated $20.57 billion in U.S. retail ecommerce sales in 2026, roughly 1.5% of the total, according to EMARKETER (December 2025 forecast). Long-range projections diverge sharply by methodology: McKinsey estimates $3–5 trillion in global agentic commerce revenue by 2030; Gartner puts $15+ trillion in B2B alone through agent intermediation by 2028. Consumer trust for fully autonomous checkout sits at 14% in the U.S. today, while AI-referred traffic already converts 54% better than non-AI traffic on Shopify and Adobe data as of May 2026.
Key Findings
- EMARKETER projects AI platforms will account for $20.57 billion in U.S. retail ecommerce in 2026, representing approximately 1.5% of total U.S. ecommerce — nearly quadruple the 2025 figure. (EMARKETER, December 2025 forecast)
- Gartner forecasts 90% of all B2B purchases will be intermediated by AI agents by 2028, routing more than $15 trillion through automated exchanges — a figure roughly equivalent to half of U.S. GDP. (Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo, November 2025)
- AI-driven traffic to Shopify stores grew 8x year over year in Q1 2026, while orders from AI-powered searches grew nearly 13x, with new buyer orders arriving at nearly twice the rate of traditional organic search. (Shopify Q1 2026 Earnings, SEC Form 8-K, May 5, 2026)
- Salesforce data from 1.5 billion shoppers shows AI and agents influenced $67 billion in global sales during Cyber Week 2025 (November 25–December 1), representing 20% of all global orders — up from approximately $60 billion in 2024. (Salesforce press release, December 5, 2025)
- According to Axis Intelligence Research’s AI Commerce Trust Gap Index™ (ACTG™), consumer authorization for autonomous purchasing lags AI commerce activity by 51 percentage points in the U.S.: 65% of Americans trust AI to compare prices, but only 14% trust it to place orders autonomously. (Derived from YouGov/Checkout.com 2026 data; full methodology below)
The Axis Intelligence AI Commerce Trust Gap Index™ (ACTG™)
Agentic commerce statistics are unusually scattered because firms measure different things: Salesforce counts AI-influenced sales across its 1.5-billion-shopper dataset; EMARKETER counts autonomous checkout inside AI platforms; Gartner counts B2B procurement routing. None publishes a single number capturing how far consumer authorization trails the underlying activity. Axis Intelligence Research fills that gap.
The ACTG™ is a single-number index capturing the distance between what consumers trust AI to do in commerce and what AI is already doing. It runs from 0 (no gap — full trust matches full activity) to 100 (maximum gap — full activity, zero trust).
Formula:
ACTG™ = AI_Activity_Score − AI_Authorization_Score
Where:
AI_Activity_Score = % of consumers who use AI at any stage of a buying journey
AI_Authorization_Score = % of consumers who trust AI to place orders autonomously
Source inputs (U.S., 2026):
AI_Activity_Score = 65% (YouGov 2025 / Checkout.com 2026 survey: consumers trusting AI to compare prices —
used as the high-water mark of willingness to engage AI commercially)
AI_Authorization_Score = 14% (Checkout.com / YouGov 2026 data; Commercetools agentic commerce radar May 2026)
ACTG™ (U.S., Q2 2026) = 65 − 14 = 51
Interpretation: A score of 51 means the U.S. agentic commerce market carries a 51-point authorization deficit. Merchants can acquire AI-referred shoppers — that traffic already converts significantly better — but they cannot yet rely on agents completing autonomous checkout at scale. The ACTG™ is a leading indicator: as trust infrastructure (spending caps, instant revocation, cryptographic agent identity verification) matures, the index should fall. An ACTG™ near zero would signal that full agentic checkout is mainstream.
Comparison markets (as of Q2 2026, Axis Intelligence Research calculation from Checkout.com data):
| Market | AI Commerce Activity Score | AI Authorization Score | ACTG™ |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 65% | 14% | 51 |
| Australia | 62% | 20% | 42 |
| United Kingdom | ~58% | 15% | ~43 |
Sources: YouGov 2025 (U.S. price-comparison trust); Checkout.com Agentic Commerce 2026 report (authorization figures); Commercetools Agentic Commerce Radar, May 2026 (U.S. 14%). ACTG™ is an Axis Intelligence Research proprietary metric. Axis Intelligence Research co-calculated these figures from named public sources; it did not commission primary survey fieldwork. CC BY 4.0 — cite as: Axis Intelligence Research, ACTG™ Q2 2026.
How Big Is the Agentic Commerce Market in 2026?
No single figure covers the whole market, because firms define agentic commerce differently. The three most-cited sources measure different slices:
EMARKETER (narrowest definition — autonomous checkout inside AI platforms): Projects $20.57 billion in U.S. retail ecommerce in 2026, equal to approximately 1.5% of total U.S. online retail, per EMARKETER’s December 2025 forecast. That is nearly four times the 2025 figure, making it the fastest-growing channel in the dataset. This is the most conservative and most verifiable number because it counts only completed transactions that originated from and concluded within an AI platform.
McKinsey (broadest definition — AI-orchestrated retail revenue including influenced purchases): Estimates the global B2C opportunity at $3–5 trillion by 2030, with U.S. B2C retail alone at $900 billion to $1 trillion. McKinsey’s count includes AI-influenced purchases where an agent contributed materially to the decision, not only autonomous checkout. These figures originate from McKinsey’s October 2025 analysis published via Digital Commerce 360.
Gartner (B2B procurement only): Forecasts that AI agents will intermediate more than $15 trillion in B2B purchases by 2028, per the firm’s top strategic prediction for 2026 presented at the November 2025 IT Symposium/Xpo in Orlando. Gartner’s definition requires meaningful autonomous action — supplier identification, contract negotiation, order execution — without human review at each step.
Journalists and researchers should state which definition they are using. Comparing these figures directly is methodologically incorrect.
AI Agent Market Size Projections by Source and Scope
| Source | Scope | Geography | Projection | Time horizon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EMARKETER | Autonomous checkout in AI platforms | U.S. retail ecommerce | $20.57B | 2026 |
| Morgan Stanley | Agent-driven ecommerce (requires autonomous action) | U.S. | $190B–$385B | 2030 |
| Bain & Company | Agent-influenced purchases | U.S. ecommerce | $300B–$500B | 2030 |
| McKinsey | AI-orchestrated retail revenue | U.S. B2C | $900B–$1T | 2030 |
| McKinsey | AI-orchestrated retail revenue | Global | $3T–$5T | 2030 |
| Gartner | AI agent-intermediated purchasing | B2B, global | >$15T | 2028 |
Sources: EMARKETER December 2025 forecast; Morgan Stanley AlphaWise November 2025; Bain & Company 2024; McKinsey Global Institute October 2025 (via Digital Commerce 360); Gartner IT Symposium November 2025.
Alex Rivera’s note: The spread from $20.57 billion to $5 trillion tells you less about the future than it tells you about what each firm decided to count. EMARKETER’s figure is the one you can actually verify against platform data today. The trillion-dollar projections are architectural scenarios — useful for strategy, dangerous if quoted as current fact.
How Fast Is AI-Driven Traffic Growing in Retail?
The growth numbers here are the most empirically solid in this space because they come from platform-level analytics rather than surveys.
Adobe Digital Insights: Retail AI Traffic
Adobe Digital Insights tracks AI-referred traffic — defined as sessions where the visitor clicked through to a retail site from a generative AI platform such as ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, or Perplexity — across over 130 top North American retailers. Key findings from the most recent published data:
- Q1 2026 (January–March): AI-referred traffic to U.S. retail sites grew 393% year over year. In March 2026 specifically, growth was 269% year over year.
- May 2026: AI-referred retail traffic grew 138% year over year and had surged 1,324% since October 2024, when Adobe began tracking AI referral traffic. Even without a seasonal peak, May 2026 set a new all-time high.
- Conversion reversal: In March 2025, AI referral traffic converted 38% worse than non-AI traffic. By March 2026, it converted 42% better — a full reversal within one year. By May 2026, the advantage widened to 54% better than non-AI traffic (Adobe Digital Insights, June 2026).
- 2025 holiday season (November–December): AI-driven traffic rose 693.4% year over year; holiday revenue per visit from AI referrals was up 254%.
Adobe AI Traffic Growth by Industry (Q1 2026 YoY)
| Industry | AI Visit Growth YoY (Q1 2026) |
|---|---|
| Retail | +393% |
| Travel | +233% |
| Financial Services | +158% |
| Media & Entertainment | +84% |
| Tech & Software | +63% |
Source: Adobe Digital Insights Quarterly AI Traffic Report, April 2026. Data covers U.S. sites; growth measured January–March 2026 vs. January–March 2025.
Shopify: Platform-Level AI Commerce Data
Shopify’s Q1 2026 earnings, filed with the SEC as Form 8-K on May 5, 2026, contain the most detailed merchant-level AI commerce dataset available from a public company:
- AI-driven traffic to Shopify stores grew 8x year over year
- Orders from AI-powered searches grew nearly 13x year over year — the fastest-growing inbound channel Shopify has ever tracked
- New buyer orders from AI searches arrived at nearly 2x the rate of traditional organic search channels
- AI-referred sessions convert at nearly 50% higher rates than organic search on product detail pages
- AI-referred orders carry 14% higher average order values than organic search orders
- More than half of AI-referred sessions start on product detail pages, versus roughly 20% for organic search — the signal Shopify calls “journey compression”
- AI-referred conversion outperformed organic SEO in 23 of 25 merchant categories, by an average of 56% within those categories
Per PYMNTS coverage of the earnings call, Shopify President Harley Finkelstein described catalog data quality as the decisive variable: Shopify’s 1 billion+ structured product listings enable AI agents to surface products in real time. Per platform data, catalog-powered AI searches convert at 2x the rate of general AI searches that rely on unstructured or outdated data.
Who Is Using AI for Shopping? Consumer Adoption Data
IBM Institute for Business Value / NRF (January 2026)
The most comprehensive consumer survey in this space: IBM and the National Retail Federation surveyed 18,000+ consumers across 23 countries in Q3 2025 and published results on January 7, 2026. Key figures:
- 45% of global consumers use AI for help during their buying journeys
- Of those, 41% use AI to research products, 33% to interpret reviews, and 31% to hunt for deals
- 72% still shop in physical stores — AI use for discovery does not yet signal abandonment of traditional channels
- IBM press release: 54% of retail executives report persistent data and channel integration challenges; 51% cite limited AI expertise
Consumer Trust by Shopping Function (U.S., 2026)
The gap between AI use for research and AI use for autonomous checkout is the defining tension in agentic commerce adoption. Survey data from YouGov (published via Commercetools) and Checkout.com:
| Shopping function | % of U.S. consumers who trust AI | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Compare prices and options | 65% | YouGov 2025 / Commercetools 2026 |
| Research products | 41% | IBM IBV / NRF, January 2026 |
| Place orders autonomously | 14% | Checkout.com / Commercetools Radar, 2026 |
Note: The gap between 65% (price comparison) and 14% (order placement) produces an ACTG™ score of 51 for the U.S. — see methodology section above.
Generation by Trust Level (U.S.)
Trust in AI order placement is highest among Gen Z at 29% and millennials at 30%, according to Checkout.com data reported in the Commercetools Agentic Commerce Radar (May 2026). Among all U.S. consumers, only 14% would allow an AI to place an order on their behalf.
Checkout.com Global Study (June 2026)
Checkout.com’s Agentic Commerce 2026: The State of Consumer Demand and Merchant Readiness, published June 9, 2026, covered UK, U.S., and Australian consumers. Key findings:
- 33% of consumers expect at least 10% of their purchases to be AI-driven within a year
- 24% say they will never delegate purchases to AI
- 27% trust no organization to operate an AI shopping agent
- 72% of merchants agree consumers will adopt agent-led shopping faster than most merchants are prepared for
- Only 3% of transactions currently involve an AI agent, even though 89% of merchants are actively preparing for agentic commerce
- In the U.S., 67% of consumers express interest in agentic shopping; in Australia, 62%; in the UK, approximately 58%
- Top consumer conditions for delegation: spending caps (30%), instant revocation (29%), easy cancellation (28%)
Agentic Commerce During Cyber Week 2025: The First Real-Scale Test
Cyber Week 2025 (November 25–December 1) produced the most cited benchmark dataset for real-world agentic commerce performance. Salesforce analyzed data from more than 1.5 billion shoppers across 89 countries.
Per Salesforce’s December 5, 2025 press release:
- Total global Cyber Week sales: $336.6 billion (+7% year over year)
- U.S. Cyber Week sales: $79.6 billion (+5% year over year)
- AI and agents influenced $67 billion in global sales — 20% of all global orders
- Retailers deploying Salesforce’s Agentforce 360 with branded agents saw sales grow 32% faster than those without
- Agentic customer service conversations grew 55% week over week
- Agent-initiated actions (returns, address changes, etc.) surged 70% versus the prior week
- Agentforce Service resolved more than 4.2 billion case interactions
This is a vendor-dataset figure: Salesforce defines “influenced” broadly to include AI-driven product recommendations and conversational customer service, not only autonomous checkout. It is not independently audited. The figure is nonetheless the most commonly cited benchmark and the largest confirmed agentic commerce measurement published from a single source.
Retailers with dedicated agents in the 2025 holiday season vs. those without: the 7x U.S. sales growth differential (13% vs 2%) is the clearest commercial evidence to date of agentic commerce’s revenue impact on the merchant cohort that adopted early.
B2B Agentic Commerce: The Larger Market
The B2C conversation dominates press coverage. The B2B market is larger and, by Gartner’s timeline, moves faster.
Gartner’s top strategic prediction for 2026 (November 2025 IT Symposium, Orlando): By 2028, 90% of all B2B purchases will be intermediated by AI agents, routing more than $15 trillion through automated, machine-to-machine exchanges. This is not a long-range forecast; it is a 24-month runway from the time the prediction was made. The $15 trillion figure roughly equals half of U.S. GDP — a number that, if directionally correct, represents one of the most significant structural shifts in commercial history.
Gartner’s definition requires autonomous action: agents that research suppliers, negotiate contracts, enforce compliance parameters, and execute purchase orders with minimal human oversight per step.
A separate Gartner projection: by 2030, 20% of monetary transactions will be programmable, providing the economic infrastructure for agents to transact autonomously.
Forrester (2026 State of Business Buying, ~18,000 global B2B buyers): 94% of B2B buyers use generative AI as a core research tool in the purchasing process. Separately, Gartner’s March 2026 survey of 646 B2B buyers found 67% now prefer a representative-free experience for routine procurement.
Key structural dynamics:
- AI agents in B2B procurement query four data elements in real time: pricing, promotions, inventory availability, and delivery estimates. Suppliers whose systems do not expose these via API are effectively invisible to agent-driven procurement flows.
- Per Mirakl’s 2026 B2B commerce research, agents do not browse — they query. Catalogs in batch-synced PDFs do not qualify.
- Gartner (separate prediction): by 2028, AI agents will outnumber human sellers by tenfold, yet fewer than 40% of sellers will report productivity improvement — suggesting that quantity of agents does not guarantee deployment quality.
B2B Agentic Commerce Readiness Gap
| Indicator | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| B2B buyers using GenAI as core research tool | 94% | Forrester, January 2026 |
| B2B buyers preferring rep-free experience | 67% | Gartner survey, March 2026 (646 buyers) |
| B2B organizations with “advanced” AI commerce maturity | 18% | Boston Consulting Group, 2026 |
| B2B companies with agent-ready real-time pricing API | <50% est. | Gartner / Mirakl 2026 analysis |
| Share of B2B purchases AI agent-intermediated by 2028 (forecast) | 90% | Gartner, November 2025 |
| B2B value through agent exchanges by 2028 (forecast) | >$15T | Gartner, November 2025 |
Note: The “18% advanced AI commerce maturity” figure is from BCG 2026 research; the <50% API readiness figure is Axis Intelligence Research’s reading of Gartner and Mirakl analysis and is labeled as an estimate, not a survey-derived statistic.
Alex Rivera’s note: BCG’s 18% figure is the one to bookmark. It means 82% of B2B organizations are building toward infrastructure standards that Gartner says will govern $15 trillion in spending within 24 months. The window for suppliers to build agent-readable catalogs and real-time pricing APIs is measured in quarters, not years.
Agentic Commerce Protocols: The Infrastructure Layer
The protocol stack is where the technical story meets the commercial one. No single protocol dominates in mid-2026, and the pace of adoption by major platforms determines how fast the ACTG™ falls.
| Protocol | Developer | Launch | Scope | Key adopters |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) | OpenAI + Stripe | September 2025 | Autonomous checkout in AI platforms | Stripe merchants, 1M+ via Shopify |
| Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) | January 2026 (NRF) | Full commerce journey (discovery → checkout) | Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Salesforce | |
| Model Context Protocol (MCP) | Anthropic | Open source | Agent-to-tool communication (general) | Broad developer adoption |
| Mastercard Verifiable Intent | Mastercard + Google | March 2026 | Cryptographic consumer authorization | Open standard; FI and payment adoption in progress |
Sources: OpenAI/Stripe press materials September 2025; Google NRF 2026 announcement; Search Engine Land UCP partner list; Mastercard press release March 5, 2026.
The September 2025 OpenAI–Stripe partnership to launch Instant Checkout in ChatGPT — the first major deployment of ACP — gave merchants access to Stripe’s 1 million+ merchant base for direct checkout inside the ChatGPT interface at no listing fee. Google followed in January 2026 with the Universal Commerce Protocol at NRF, backed by a coalition that now includes Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Salesforce, and Stripe.
The absence of a dominant, widely adopted standard is itself a statistic: as of mid-2026, the two primary protocols (ACP and UCP) are not yet interoperable, and most B2B suppliers have not implemented either.
Agentic Commerce Security: The Fraud Dimension
Autonomy at scale creates fraud exposure at scale. Commercial security data here comes primarily from vendor studies.
Accenture banking survey (2026): 78% of financial institutions expect fraud linked to AI agents to increase; 87% of CTOs and heads of payments believe trust will be the most significant barrier to agentic payment adoption.
Darwinium 2026 research: 97% of organizations surveyed reported an increase in AI-facilitated attacks in the prior year; the average reported annual direct loss from AI-enabled fraud was $4.5 million.
Visa security report (cited by Commercetools): A 25% spike in malicious bot-initiated transactions over a six-month period, with a 40% surge in the U.S., attributed to fraudsters using AI agents to automate account takeover, inventory manipulation, and checkout abuse.
The framework emerging in response is “Know Your Agent” (KYA) — analogous to Know Your Customer (KYC) — requiring verification of the agent’s identity, permissioned scope, and behavioral parameters in addition to the end user’s identity. McKinsey cited KYA as a foundational requirement for the agentic commerce opportunity in its 2026 analysis.
What Is the AI Commerce Trust Gap and Why Does It Matter?
The ACTG™ (see methodology section above) quantifies the operational constraint on autonomous agentic commerce today. A score of 51 in the U.S. does not mean agentic commerce is failing — it means the market is in an early trust-building phase comparable to where mobile commerce was in 2012, when mobile sessions far outnumbered mobile purchases.
The specific mechanics consumers cite for bridging the gap are precise. Checkout.com’s June 2026 data identifies:
- Spending caps (cited by 30% of consumers as a prerequisite)
- Instant revocation (29%)
- Easy cancellation (28%)
- Average authorized spend per autonomous transaction without re-authorization: £177 (~$224) — below the £200 (~$253) merchants expected
These are not exotic demands. They are the same control-and-transparency conditions that enabled the adoption of mobile wallets, one-click checkout, and auto-renewing subscriptions. The payment infrastructure for agentic checkout — ACP, UCP, Mastercard Verifiable Intent, Stripe Shared Payment Tokens — is addressing each condition directly. As these mature and trust compiles from successful transactions, the ACTG™ is expected to decline. Axis Intelligence Research will recalculate the index quarterly.
Agentic Commerce by Region
Agentic commerce adoption is not uniform across geographies.
North America holds the largest share of AI-driven retail activity by transaction volume, driven by ChatGPT’s and Shopify’s U.S. concentration, the ACP/UCP protocol launches, and Adobe’s North American retailer measurement base. EMARKETER’s $20.57 billion 2026 U.S. projection represents the most reliable regional anchor.
Asia-Pacific is the fastest-growing region by AI retail infrastructure build-out. Per Mordor Intelligence, the Asia-Pacific AI retail market is projected to grow at a 34.88% CAGR through 2031. India sees 48% of retailers piloting generative AI. China’s AI-powered live commerce produced documented cases of AI avatars generating $7 million in seven hours; consumer familiarity with AI-mediated purchasing is measurably higher than in Western markets.
Europe leads in regulatory structuring. The EU AI Act, which becomes fully applicable in August 2026, imposes transparency and human-oversight requirements on high-risk AI systems, including some commerce applications. IKEA’s governance framework has been cited as the blueprint for compliant agentic retail in the EU. The UK presents a specific measurement point: only 15% of the top 100 UK retailers say their payment systems are prepared for agent transactions, even though 49% are actively investing in agentic AI (UK Payments Association, 2026). 58% of UK online merchants believe AI agents have already reached their platforms; measured agent transaction share is 3%.
Agentic Commerce Regional Snapshot (2026)
| Region | Key metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| U.S. | AI platform-driven ecommerce (2026 forecast) | $20.57B | EMARKETER, Dec 2025 |
| U.S. | ACTG™ (trust gap index) | 51 | Axis Intelligence Research, Q2 2026 |
| Australia | ACTG™ (trust gap index) | 42 | Axis Intelligence Research, Q2 2026 |
| UK | Top-100 retailers payment-ready for agents | 15% | UK Payments Association, 2026 |
| UK | Merchants who believe agents are already on their platforms | 58% | UK Payments Association, 2026 |
| Asia-Pacific | Projected AI retail CAGR 2026–2031 | 34.88% | Mordor Intelligence, 2026 |
| India | Retailers piloting generative AI | 48% | Mordor Intelligence, 2026 |
| Global (B2B) | AI agent-intermediated purchases by 2028 (forecast) | 90% of B2B | Gartner, Nov 2025 |
Frequently Asked Questions About Agentic Commerce Statistics
What is agentic commerce?
Agentic commerce is the model in which AI agents autonomously handle some or all of a purchasing journey on behalf of a consumer or business — from product discovery and comparison through to checkout and post-purchase management. Unlike a chatbot that answers queries, an agentic system combines memory, tool access, multi-step reasoning, and transaction authority. The degree of autonomy varies: some agents handle only discovery, others complete full checkout, and B2B procurement agents negotiate terms and execute purchase orders without human review per step.
How large is the agentic commerce market in 2026?
EMARKETER, measuring only checkout transactions that occur inside AI platforms, projects $20.57 billion in U.S. retail ecommerce in 2026, representing approximately 1.5% of total U.S. ecommerce — nearly four times the 2025 figure. Broader definitions that include AI-influenced but not fully autonomous purchases project substantially larger numbers. Forecasts for 2030 range from $190 billion (Morgan Stanley, narrow autonomous-action definition) to $5 trillion (McKinsey, orchestrated retail revenue), depending on what each firm counts. B2B agentic commerce, per Gartner, is projected to exceed $15 trillion by 2028.
How fast is AI-driven retail traffic growing?
Adobe Digital Insights reports that AI-referred traffic to U.S. retail sites grew 393% year over year in Q1 2026 and has surged 1,324% since Adobe began tracking the channel in October 2024. On Shopify’s platform, AI-driven traffic grew 8x year over year in Q1 2026, while orders from those sessions grew nearly 13x. These are platform-measured figures, not survey estimates.
Do AI-referred shoppers convert better than traditional shoppers?
Yes, by multiple metrics. Adobe Digital Insights reports AI-referred traffic converted 54% better than non-AI traffic in May 2026, a reversal from converting 38% worse in March 2025. AI-referred shoppers spend 53% more time on site, browse 23% more pages, and have bounce rates 20%+ lower than non-AI traffic. Shopify’s Q1 2026 data shows AI-referred sessions convert at nearly 50% higher rates than organic search on product detail pages, with 14% higher average order values. The improvement mechanism is “journey compression” — AI narrows consideration before the click, so visitors arrive more purchase-ready.
What share of consumers trust AI to complete purchases autonomously?
As of mid-2026, only 14% of U.S. consumers trust AI to place orders on their behalf, per Checkout.com and YouGov data cited in Commercetools’ Agentic Commerce Radar (May 2026). Trust is higher among Gen Z (29%) and millennials (30%). By contrast, 65% of U.S. consumers trust AI to compare prices — producing an ACTG™ (AI Commerce Trust Gap) of 51 for the U.S. One in four consumers (24%) say they will never delegate purchases to AI, and 27% trust no organization to operate an agent on their behalf.
What is Gartner’s B2B agentic commerce forecast?
Gartner’s top strategic prediction for 2026 (presented at the IT Symposium/Xpo in November 2025) is that 90% of all B2B purchases will be intermediated by AI agents by 2028, routing more than $15 trillion through automated, machine-to-machine exchanges. This requires suppliers to expose real-time pricing, inventory, and fulfillment data via API — a standard most B2B catalogs do not currently meet. Per BCG’s 2026 research, only 18% of B2B companies describe their AI commerce maturity as “advanced.”
What are the main protocols powering agentic commerce?
The two primary consumer-facing protocols are the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), launched by OpenAI and Stripe in September 2025, enabling checkout inside AI platforms; and the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), announced by Google at NRF in January 2026 and backed by Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Salesforce, Stripe, Shopify, Target, Etsy, and Wayfair. Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP) underlies agent-to-tool communication more broadly. Mastercard’s Verifiable Intent framework (March 2026) adds cryptographic consumer authorization. The two major transactional protocols are not yet interoperable.
What are the fraud risks in agentic commerce?
Darwinium’s 2026 research found 97% of organizations have experienced an increase in AI-facilitated attacks in the past year, with average direct losses of $4.5 million. Visa reported a 25% spike in bot-initiated malicious transactions over a six-month period, with a 40% surge in the U.S. An Accenture survey found 78% of financial institutions expect agent-related fraud to increase. The emerging response is “Know Your Agent” (KYA) verification — establishing the agent’s identity, permitted scope, and behavioral parameters alongside the consumer’s identity.
How does AI agent commerce affect B2B procurement?
B2B is where AI agent intermediation is projected to go mainstream fastest. Gartner projects 90% of B2B purchases through agents by 2028. Current signals include: Forrester (2026) finding 94% of B2B buyers use AI as a core research tool; Gartner’s March 2026 survey finding 67% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free experience for routine procurement; and analyst consensus that agents query real-time pricing, inventory, and delivery data — and skip suppliers whose systems cannot deliver it via API.
What is the AI Commerce Trust Gap Index™?
The ACTG™ is an original Axis Intelligence Research metric quantifying the difference between the share of consumers who use AI commercially at any stage of a buying journey (measured as those who trust AI to compare prices, as the high-water usage mark) and the share who authorize AI to complete autonomous purchases. For the U.S. in Q2 2026, the ACTG™ is 51 (65% comparison trust − 14% order authorization). The lower the score, the closer consumer authorization is to actual AI commerce activity — with zero representing full trust parity. Axis Intelligence Research will update this metric quarterly.
Methodology
Research Protocol
Axis Intelligence Research conducted this study using a two-pass research architecture. In the research pass, primary sources were fetched and read, with URLs and retrieval dates logged for every quantitative claim. In the verification pass, all numbers in prose were matched against the source documents.
Primary sources fetched and verified for this article:
- Shopify Q1 2026 Earnings (SEC Form 8-K, May 5, 2026) — confirming 8x traffic, 13x orders, conversion and AOV figures
- Salesforce Cyber Week 2025 press release (December 5, 2025, investor.salesforce.com) — confirming $67B / 20% of orders
- IBM Institute for Business Value / NRF January 7, 2026 press release (newsroom.ibm.com) — confirming 45% AI use in buying journeys, survey methodology (18,000+ respondents, 23 countries, Q3 2025 fieldwork)
- Adobe Digital Insights Quarterly AI Traffic Report, April 2026 (business.adobe.com) — confirming 393% Q1 2026 retail growth, 42% conversion advantage
- Adobe Digital Insights, June 2026 (business.adobe.com) — confirming 138% May 2026 retail growth, 54% conversion advantage, 1,324% since October 2024
- EMARKETER December 2025 forecast (emarketer.com) — confirming $20.57B / 1.5% of U.S. retail ecommerce
- Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo November 2025 (digitalcommerce360.com; gartner.com) — confirming 90% B2B / $15T prediction
- Checkout.com Agentic Commerce 2026 report (checkout.com/newsroom, June 9, 2026) — confirming 33% expect 10%+ AI purchases, 24% never, 72% merchant concern
- Commercetools Agentic Commerce Radar, May 2026 (commercetools.com/blog) — confirming 14% U.S. checkout trust, 65% price comparison trust
ACTG™ Methodology
The AI Commerce Trust Gap Index is a cross-source composite metric. Axis Intelligence Research identified the published consumer trust figures from two named sources that used consistent methodology (online consumer surveys in the U.S. market, 2025–2026). The “activity” anchor (65% trusting AI for price comparison) and “authorization” floor (14% trusting AI for order placement) were both drawn from named published research, not modeled or interpolated. The subtraction is arithmetic. Axis Intelligence Research will re-run this calculation each quarter as new survey data becomes available from the same or comparable named sources.
This metric is not equivalent to net AI shopping adoption; it is a gap metric designed to track the authorization deficit specifically. Users of this index should note that the two input surveys were fielded by different organizations and at slightly different points in 2025–2026, introducing a methodological seam. The index is a planning tool, not a regulatory-grade measurement.
Limitations
- EMARKETER’s $20.57 billion U.S. figure is a forecast, not observed revenue; it will be revised as Q4 2026 data emerges.
- Salesforce’s Cyber Week “influenced” definition is broad and not independently audited; the $67 billion figure includes AI-driven product recommendations, not only autonomous checkout.
- Gartner’s 90% B2B forecast is a strategic prediction, not a measured outcome; Gartner forecasts can and do miss.
- Adobe’s AI traffic data covers 130+ North American retailers and is self-reported by Adobe; independent validation does not exist at this scale.
- The ACTG™ uses survey data with inherent self-report bias; stated trust does not guarantee behavioral follow-through.
- Regional figures outside North America are sparser and carry higher uncertainty.
About This Dataset
Dataset title: Agentic Commerce Statistics 2026
Creator and publisher: Axis Intelligence Research
Geographic coverage: Global, with U.S., UK, Australia, Asia-Pacific, and European breakdowns
Temporal coverage: 2024–2026, with forecasts to 2030 and 2028
Update cadence: Quarterly reviews triggered by: new Adobe Digital Insights AI traffic reports (quarterly); Shopify earnings (quarterly); EMARKETER forecast revisions; Gartner strategic prediction updates; Checkout.com / consumer trust survey releases
License: CC BY 4.0 — free to use, share, and adapt with attribution
Hugging Face / Kaggle: Archived on publication
Cite This Research
APA: Axis Intelligence Research. (2026, July 9). Agentic commerce statistics 2026: Market size, AI traffic, trust gap & B2B data. Axis Intelligence. https://axis-intelligence.com/agentic-commerce-statistics/
MLA: Axis Intelligence Research. “Agentic Commerce Statistics 2026: Market Size, AI Traffic, Trust Gap & B2B Data.” Axis Intelligence, 9 July 2026, axis-intelligence.com/agentic-commerce-statistics/.
Chicago: Axis Intelligence Research. “Agentic Commerce Statistics 2026: Market Size, AI Traffic, Trust Gap & B2B Data.” Axis Intelligence. July 9, 2026. https://axis-intelligence.com/agentic-commerce-statistics/.
Embeddable citation: According to Axis Intelligence Research’s ACTG™ index, the U.S. agentic commerce market carries a 51-point authorization deficit as of Q2 2026: 65% of Americans trust AI to compare prices, but only 14% trust it to place orders autonomously. (Axis Intelligence Research, July 2026 — CC BY 4.0)
Internal links: AI Adoption Statistics 2026 · Shopify Statistics 2026 · E-Commerce Statistics 2026 · Mobile Commerce Statistics 2026 · Agentic AI Statistics 2025–2026