The Upcoming AI Evolution: Influencing the Future of Trade and Business
In the ever-evolving world of technology, a new frontier is emerging – AI-powered agentic commerce. This innovative approach, which allows AI agents to make purchases on behalf of consumers, was recently discussed by industry experts in a podcast.
AI agents promise to significantly enhance the customer experience by optimising split-tender scenarios and effectively redeeming loyalty points. Merchants might also offer incentives to these AI agents to shop at their stores instead of competitors, potentially altering the dynamics of commerce.
However, this exciting development is not without its risks and challenges. Javelin Strategy & Research analysts and related expert sources have highlighted several potential issues.
Anticompetitive behaviour and regulatory concerns could arise as agentic AI unintentionally facilitates price-setting collusion or monopolistic practices. Ensuring transparency, clear policies, and human oversight will be crucial to build trust and prevent legal scrutiny.
Trust and reliability issues are another barrier to adoption. Users may be hesitant to trust AI agents to make autonomous decisions, especially in sensitive domains like finance. Ensuring transparency, clear policies, and human oversight are essential to build trust.
Security, privacy, and compliance risks are significant concerns as AI agents handle large amounts of personal and sensitive data. Protecting against cyberattacks, data leaks, and complying with cybersecurity standards will be major challenges.
Bias and misinformation risks are also potential pitfalls. Without responsible AI governance, agentic AI could propagate systemic bias, misinformation, or operational failures that damage reputation, disrupt business, or put safety at risk.
Market fairness and pricing challenges could arise due to hyper-personalised dynamic pricing driven by AI agents. This disparity raises fairness and discrimination concerns under regulatory scrutiny.
Operational integration and talent gaps are additional challenges slowing adoption. Integrating AI agents into existing systems and finding skilled personnel to manage them remain significant hurdles.
To safely and fairly adopt AI-powered agentic commerce, strong human-in-the-loop principles, responsible AI frameworks, robust security measures, transparent governance, and regulatory compliance will be essential.
The emergence of agentic commerce also increases the risk of text and email scams impersonating legitimate agent services. Fraud prevention has been a standout use case for AI, but the emergence of this new technology connecting consumers, merchants, and financial institutions introduces new risks that must be addressed.
Criminals may create fake websites and apps posing as legitimate AI agent services to scam consumers and collect PII and payment information. Continuous authentication throughout the entire life cycle of the agent interaction will be necessary to prevent fraud.
Despite these challenges, the providers of the AI agents themselves are likely to benefit the most from the emergence of agentic commerce. Prepaid accounts may serve as a bridge connecting consumers to agentic commerce, with consumers already accustomed to turning money over to prepaid accounts.
As the industry moves forward, an open mind and understanding of the potential for an entire industry of developers and systems integrators working on agentic AI will be important. Visa and Mastercard's agentic AI platforms, such as Intelligent Commerce and Agent Pay, are imminent, and they are likely just the first of many AI-powered initiatives in the industry.
While skepticism is warranted regarding agentic commerce, it is gaining momentum and could give rise to an entire industry. Persuading consumers to entrust their payment data to an AI agent will likely require a deeper understanding of AI than many users currently have. However, with responsible development and implementation, AI-powered agentic commerce could revolutionise the way we shop and do business.
Artificial intelligence agents could revolutionize the business landscape by navigating complex finance matters, such as optimizing split-tender scenarios and effectively redeeming loyalty points. However, the emergence of AI-powered agentic commerce raises concerns about security and privacy, as these agents handle personal and sensitive financial data.
Ensuring robust security measures, responsible AI governance, and transparency in policy-making are essential to build trust among consumers and prevent data breaches. Additionally, industry regulators may need to address regulatory challenges, such as potential anticompetitive behavior and monopolistic practices, to ensure fair and responsible adoption of AI-powered agentic commerce.
