Agentic commerce, where AI agents undertake purchases or other economic activity on a user’s behalf, has so far seen relatively limited adoption despite a gush of interest from Silicon Valley and Wall Street. But the possibility of disrupting the online payments space is nevertheless proving too lucrative for many major institutions to pass up.
That includes American Express, which on Tuesday announced an agentic commerce developer kit as well as purchase protection for erroneous purchases made by registered AI agents. The move is a signal that a niche industry could expand quickly as the AI era evolves.
“To date there have probably been as many press releases [on agentic commerce] as transactions, but no doubt it will happen,” Luke Gebb, American Express executive vice president and head of global innovation, told Fortune. “It will start within zones where there is just a good value for the user.”
Indeed, there have been a number of agentic commerce press releases: Mastercard, Visa, and Stripe have all released infrastructure in the sector over the past several months.
Agentic express
A future where AI agents book flights and refill paper towel stockpiles is one where consumers could save considerable time, but it also opens up risks around what happens when AI agents do not carry out tasks as intended. The agentic commerce space has yet to figure out what to do with that risk, Gebb said.
American Express is pledging to protect users from erroneous transactions made by agents that are registered with Amex. Gebb argued the company is in a good position to do so, given that it already has processes in place for handling disputed transactions from its customers. When asked about the cost to American Express of protecting against AI errors, Gebb said that agents will improve over time, and if consumers have the confidence to transact using agents on the Amex network, that will ultimately bring more transaction volume to the company.
An American Express spokesperson also made the case that the developer kit will reduce customer disputes and charge-backs because the kit only gives payment credentials to verified agents, and Amex will authenticate card members before allowing them to use agents, thereby giving merchants a stronger baseline of legitimacy.
Some in crypto circles are making the case that the agent economy ought to run on stablecoin rails. Gebb said American Express has a “variety of plans” surrounding stablecoins—which he sees as useful more for settlement than for payments—but declined to go into specifics.
