Entering an AI-powered commerce era where few merchants fully track automated customer journeys
New research reveals that only 23% of e-commerce merchants can clearly identify customer traffic driven by artificial intelligence agents and connect it to completed purchases, as the sector develops broader strategies for adopting agentic
Findings from the PYMNTS Intelligence report, produced in partnership with Visa Acceptance Solutions, show that e-commerce merchants remain largely unprepared for the rise of agent-based commerce. Only 23% of surveyed merchants can clearly identify and track customers arriving through AI-driven channels and attribute completed transactions to those same agents. Additionally, 21% of merchants recognize AI-generated traffic but fail to connect it to actual sales conversions.
Agentic commerce refers to autonomous AI systems that initiate and execute transactions based on customer intent—handling everything from product discovery and vendor selection to payment processing and checkout completion. While still in early stages, this model represents a fundamental shift in how digital commerce operates, with machines increasingly mediating the entire buyer journey.
For e-commerce operators, this presents an urgent operational challenge. The inability of most merchants to accurately measure and report on AI-driven traffic creates a blind spot in business analytics and decision-making. Without clear visibility into how much revenue flows through agentic channels, retailers struggle to allocate resources effectively, determine which product categories benefit most from AI discovery, or optimize algorithms that drive autonomous purchasing. The gap between those tracking agentic commerce effectively and those struggling points to a critical need for improved measurement infrastructure and analytics capabilities across the sector.