Businesses face “one of the biggest shifts in retail shopping in decades” as consumers increase use of AI in shopping and payments

More than one in ten online shoppers are expected to routinely use AI agents to purchase products on their behalf by 2030, according to a new Mastercard report, A Short History of the Future of Shopping and Payments.1

The report draws on Mastercard research and the perspectives of four world-leading futurists from the US, Europe and Asia.

It explores how a fundamental shift in shopping habits will require millions of UK businesses, from retail to real estate, finance to hospitality, to rethink how they sell products and services by the end of the decade or miss out on £370 billion a year of forecasted AI-driven consumer demand globally.

From AI-assisted agents that can negotiate prices, to smart watches and rings that show how products are performing after sale, and perhaps one day physical robots walking through shop doors, the report reveals how innovation in agentic commerce will require swift action from Britain’s business leaders.

The UK is set to be one of the first nations globally to adopt agentic commerce, according to Patrick Dixon MBE – alongside China, the US and South Korea.

“For sixty years, Mastercard has been helping people pay and get paid simply and securely, and that purpose continues through what could be one of the most significant shifts in retail shopping in decades,” says Simon Forbes, President, Mastercard UK & Ireland.

“AI increasingly helps people decide what to buy; tomorrow it will help do the purchasing for them too. As these technologies develop, solutions like Mastercard Agent Pay are helping ensure those transactions can happen securely, transparently and with consumer control. This report is an invitation for businesses to take small practical steps today to prepare for that future together.”

Retailers will serve both AI agents and people

The predictions, developed in partnership with four of the world’s leading thinkers on the future of AI and commerce, Magnus Lindkvist, Patrick Dixon MBE, Katja Forbes and Theodora Lau, uncover the changes every organisation needs to prepare for.

They envision a new kind of customer for retailers; an AI agent that can read reams of data, verify claims, scan for customer reviews and feedback in seconds to inform decision making and then complete the purchase.

As a result, they say that retailers will need to adapt loyalty programmes, customer relationships and digital experiences for agents. That means making product information, claims and policies machine-readable. For example, a sustainability claim should come with a certificate an agent can find, read and verify.

Trust will be the defining competitive advantage

The report identifies that trust is central to the shift to agentic commerce. AsMagnus Lindkvist lead futurist contributing to the report puts it: “Every great shift in commerce has been, at heart, a shift in trust. From the marketplace to the mall, to the catalogue, to the click of a button, each historic evolvement of commerce has asked people to place trust somewhere new.”

Agentic commerce is the most profound shift yet, as people no longer just trust technology to inform their choices, they trust it to make them.

According to Theodora Lau, merchants and financial institutions will need to earn that trust through clear frameworks for identity, consent, authorisation and liability.

She predicts that at least three G20 regulators are expected to issue formal guidance on registering and monitoring AI agents by 2030, and payment intent will become as valuable as the payment itself. That is because consumer authorisation for an agent to purchase on their behalf becoming readable even before the purchase has been made. 

Young consumers are already embracing AI

The report’s predictions are echoed in Mastercard’s latest research, which suggest AI-powered commerce is moving from emerging technology to mainstream behaviour, as younger generations grow comfortable delegating discovery, recommendations and decisions to AI.

A survey of 26,000 parents and teenagers (aged 13-18) across 13 countries, including 2,000 respondents in the UK, found that today’s teens are using AI to support shopping decisions at around twice the rate of their parents, and adopting AI shopping tools at a pace their parents have yet to match. 

Indeed, more than six in ten (62%) young people in the UK believe AI will significantly change the way their generation shops in the future.

Everyday purchases like groceries and subscriptions are expected to be the first categories delegated to AI agents. “By 2030, buying and shopping will no longer mean the same thing,” says Magnus. “AI agents will handle routine buying, leaving shopping as something we choose to do for discovery, inspiration and pleasure.”

• 1 in 3 (36%) teens say they’re likely to use a fully AI-run shopping assistant – one that recommends products, chooses between options and completes purchases based on rules they set – compared with 24% of parents 
• Teens are twice as likely as their parents to be using AI weekly to find the best price or discount (18% vs 10%) 
• Trust is shifting too with a third of teens (33%) saying they’d trust an AI’s product recommendation over a friend’s, while one in four (27%) would now trust AI over their own parents’ advice
• 63% of parents expect AI shopping to define their child’s generation while only 6% think it will define their own 

Early examples of agentic commerce are already happening, with Mastercard having already completed several live end-to-end payments executed by an artificial intelligence agent in Europe this year. 

Earlier this year, Mastercard created Agent Suite which combines technical support with Mastercard’s payments expertise, data-fueled insights, proprietary technology platforms, and 4,000 global advisors to help retailers and their partners integrate agentic AI into their operations and build, test and deploy fit-for-purpose agents. 

Last month, Mastercard chose the UK to announce the launch of its Proto Agentic Sandbox for retailers and their partners to explore, test and validate agentic AI use cases before introducing them into production. This includes testing whether their products are discoverable by agents, how to scale the payment experience in a way that customers can trust, whether their plans for handling disputes in this environment work at scale, and much more.