Commerce is how agentic AI proves its value
Read this guest blog by Deann Evans, Managing Director, EMEA, for techUK’s Tech and Innovation Focus Week 2026.
Agentic AI is the biggest shift in commerce since the internet. For the first time, everyone has access to a personal shopper who understands their needs, budget, and preferences, available in any conversation, at any time. And commerce is where its value will be proven first.
The signals are already here, with consumers turning to AI to help them browse and buy. AI-driven traffic to Shopify stores alone has grown 8 times year-over-year, while orders from AI-powered searches have increased nearly 13 times. This shows us how AI agents can excel at discovery, understanding what someone needs and surfacing the right products.
We are already seeing this firsthand with Agentic Storefronts, which allows merchants to sell directly inside AI-driven environments such as Google’s Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT and others.
But turning intent into a completed transaction is where commerce gets complicated: payments clearing globally, fraud caught in real time, tax calculated correctly, inventory that's accurate, returns handled. If those fail, trust is lost, potentially forever.
For agentic commerce to scale further, the technology needs to be universal across models, platforms and solutions. It also needs to be baked into every facet of merchants’ businesses, so it’s easy for agents to find the information they need.
The evolving tech landscape
Shopping surfaces are multiplying but, without the right technology in place to connect them, there is risk of fragmentation, within businesses and across the shopping experience as a whole. This means merchants need a single source of data that is consistent and syndicated automatically. A unified commerce tech stack can provide this, one that connects online and offline experiences, centralises data to give a single view of the customer across all touchpoints, and allows tools to work coherently together as one intelligent system.
If a unified commerce approach can be a foundation to build agentic commerce capabilities for merchants, interoperability and open standards are what enable it to scale. That’s why Shopify co-developed with Google the open standard for how AI agents transact with merchants: the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP).
UCP enables AI agents to interact with any online store, and aims to standardise how AI agents transact across platforms. This ensures merchants can reach shoppers on newer channels, whilst preserving the merchant’s checkout experience and brand identity. Backed by Walmart, Target, Etsy, American Express, Mastercard, Stripe, and Visa, UCP is designed to handle the full commerce journey — product discovery, checkout, payment, post-purchase — across any platform, with any payment processor.
For UK merchants, that interoperability matters. Shopping surfaces are multiplying, and without open protocols connecting them. The risk is fragmentation, within businesses and across the shopping experience as a whole. Open standards like UCP let merchants reach shoppers wherever conversations happen, while preserving their checkout, brand and customer data. That’s exactly why we wanted to make sure this wasn’t just our standard, it's the industry's standard.
Ultimately, these developments are about more than enabling AI agents to transact. They help to unlock a more interoperable AI-powered shopping ecosystem that empowers discovery, conversation and conversion. As agentic AI matures, the businesses best positioned to succeed will be those with the connected infrastructure, data foundations and interoperability needed to meet customers wherever and however they choose to shop.
What UK merchants and policymakers need to get right
The technology is here. The harder question is whether UK businesses are positioned to participate. Research from Shopify found that among UK small businesses not currently using AI, 30% say training and guidance would help adoption, 27% want clear use cases relevant to their business and 25% want to see successful examples from other similar organisations. Upskilling, clear accountability for how AI is deployed, and trust-led customer relationships will all matter.
Policy has a role too. Recent Shopify data found that 58% of UK business owners say easier access to government support would have influenced their decision to start sooner. That doesn’t necessarily mean more funding though. Offering wider access to training and making it easier to innovate are just as important. Thankfully, the introduction of the Regulation for Growth Bill, announced in this year’s King’s Speech, is a promising sign that the government is planning to help kickstart innovation.
Agentic commerce can dramatically lower the barrier to entrepreneurship. A founder in Manchester or Cardiff with a great product no longer needs a marketing budget to compete for attention on search results pages. They need trustworthy product data, a working checkout, and presence in the conversations where their customers already are.
Turning potential into proof
Agentic AI is often discussed in terms of future potential, but it’s already a reality in commerce. Unlike some sectors still exploring theoretical use cases, retail offers a clear testbed for agentic systems: helping consumers discover products, supporting purchasing decisions, and enabling merchants to operate more efficiently at scale while keeping their brand intact.
The opportunity for the UK is significant. Agentic AI has the potential to lower barriers to entrepreneurship, help businesses reach customers in new ways, and create more intuitive, personalised shopping experiences. But realising that opportunity will depend on getting the foundations right. Open and interoperable technology standards, supportive policy frameworks and organisations that invest in skills and trust-led commerce must all work together.
Agentic commerce isn’t something that retailers and brands can afford to react to. However, with the right levers in place, commerce can become one of the clearest demonstrations of how agentic AI can deliver tangible economic value.
