Building The Future of Agentic Commerce

As AI becomes a bigger part of everyday life, we take a look at how it can be applied in commerce, where software agents can search, decide, and complete transactions on a user’s behalf. Moderated by Blair Garrou, this session at Mercury Fund Day at The Ion breaks down the shift from real-time, user-driven checkouts to systems based on ongoing permissions and delegation. The panel features Matt Bouchner (Satsuma.ai), Coert Voorhees (LISNR), and Aileen Allen (Mercury Fund), who discuss how new payment rails and machine-readable systems are making this possible and where the biggest opportunities will be as this new model of commerce takes shape.

🎧 Episode Highlights

[08:17]: Building the infrastructure layer powering agentic commerce across retailers

[15:53]: From “bot equals bad” to “bot equals customer” in retail adoption

[23:38]: The gap between payment protocols and real merchant adoption

[28:20]: Why retailers are still in experimentation, not full-scale deployment

[47:01]: The tipping point: when consumers get used to buying through agents

Key Takeaways:

● Agentic commerce is shifting transactions from user-driven sessions to delegated, always-on workflows. Instead of actively browsing and checking out, users will set preferences and let software agents discover, compare, and act on their behalf.

● The biggest bottleneck isn’t the idea, it’s the infrastructure. Reliable product data, merchant readiness, payment rails, and trust layers all need to align before agentic commerce can move from experimentation to real adoption.

● Control and trust will define winners in this new model. Retailers and brands want visibility into how their products are presented and sold, while both merchants and consumers need confidence that agents are acting accurately, securely, and in their best interest.

Guest Spotlight: