Google just built the infrastructure for agentic commerce

Industry players say agentic commerce is the next big revolution in retail. I’ve spent my career in payments infrastructure and watched the same pattern repeat with every new commerce technology. It gets built on rails that weren’t designed for it, and nobody notices until something breaks. Agentic commerce is next in line, and the rail about to break is payments. Almost everyone in this conversation ignores a problem sitting in every transaction: the payment glitch. That’s when an AI agent attempts to purchase something for a consumer, but a failed credit application stops it. For agentic commerce to achieve the rosy forecasts—Bain predicts it could account for roughly 15% to 25% of total e-commerce sales ($300–500 billion) in the U.S. by 2030—merchants must find a workaround. A group of companies, spearheaded by Google, recently proposed a solution that deserves everyone’s attention. DISCOVERY: NOT SUFFICIENT ON ITS OWN Until now, the conversation about AI-powered shopping has centered on the agent’s ability to find products on a shopper’s behalf, understand intent, compare options, read reviews, and make choices. AI agents excel in this discovery process. They learn the shopper…