What is an Agentic Commerce?

Traditional e-commerce assumes a human is present at every decision point: browsing, comparing, adding to cart, and confirming checkout. Agentic commerce moves some or all of those decisions to an agent operating under explicit constraints, a budget ceiling, a preferred vendor list, delivery deadlines, letting it compare offers, apply discount codes, and complete a purchase without a human clicking through each screen. This raises trust and liability questions that pure browsing automation didn't: who is accountable if an agent buys the wrong item, and how does a merchant verify the transaction is authorized rather than fraudulent. Emerging standards address this with agent-specific payment tokens and structured checkout protocols that let a merchant's system distinguish a legitimate agent-initiated purchase from account takeover, alongside audit trails proving the agent stayed within its authorized constraints.