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— A weekly publication —

The Agentic Commerce Report

A weekly read of everything that moved in agentic commerce — protocols, payment rails, retailer pilots, regulation. Summarised, sourced, and stitched to what came before.

Retailer Pilots

8 events tracked

Live agent-commerce deployments at retailers and financial institutions began landing in volume in late 2025. Tracked weekly here: every public deployment, results disclosure, and pilot expansion.

pilot

Worldline, ING and Mastercard complete a live end-to-end European agentic payment in production

Worldline, ING and Mastercard ran Europe's first live end-to-end agentic payment in production.

The transaction ran between an ING cardholder and a merchant in the Netherlands, with a merchant AI agent identifying concert tickets within a defined budget and completing the purchase after explicit consumer approval. Worldline processed the transaction end-to-end across its issuing and acquiring platforms, covering the Netherlands and Belgium on the same infrastructure. Mastercard's Verifiable Intent framework attached a tamper-resistant authorisation record to the transaction, giving the issuing bank full visibility. A companion Mastercard Europe post confirmed all Mastercard issuers across Europe are now enabled at network level for Agent Pay. Prior Mastercard Agent Pay pilots covered Australia, New Zealand, India (2026-w09), South Korea (2026-w12), and Latin America (2026-w13). This is the first live deployment in European regulated markets, extending the programme from Asia-Pacific and emerging markets to EU-supervised financial institutions.

  1. Mastercard Newsroom
Issue 26
launch

Stellagent Launches Agentic Commerce Studio for AI Agent Shopping Readiness

Stellagent released a browser-based playground for merchants to test AI agent discovery, checkout flows, and protocol readiness.

Commerce Studio is the first merchant-facing sandbox dedicated to AI-agent readiness testing, covering discovery, checkout, and protocol compliance in one tool. The single-environment model parallels PayPal's Agent Ready (2025-w44-aeo-paypal-agentic-commerce-services) and Visa Intelligent Commerce Connect (2026-w15-payments-visa-intelligent-commerce-connect), both of which abstract multi-protocol integration. The browser-based delivery contrasts with the SDK-and-CLI model of Circle Agent Stack (2026-w20-payments-circle-agent-stack) and Mastercard's Agent Toolkit (2025-w37-payments-mastercard-agent-pay-expansion). Stellagent's positioning addresses the merchant-onboarding gap that OpenAI cited in retiring its centralised merchant-of-record model (2026-w13-aeo-openai-instant-checkout-shutdown), and complements the conversion-readiness questions raised by Walmart's ChatGPT data (2026-w13-pilots-walmart-chatgpt-conversion-data). The Studio's release signals that merchant-side agent-readiness testing has emerged as a distinct product category in 2026, joining Visa Intelligent Commerce Connect (2026-w15-payments-visa-intelligent-commerce-connect) as a multi-protocol abstraction surface.

  1. PR Newswire
Issue 23
pilot

Ulta Beauty deploys Gemini-powered shopping agent and UCP agentic checkout at Google Cloud Next

Ulta AI launches on Ulta.com via Gemini; UCP-enabled agentic checkout goes live inside Google AI Mode and the Gemini app for Ulta products.

Ulta is the first retailer to ship a live Universal Commerce Protocol checkout flow inside Google AI Mode and Gemini, eleven weeks after UCP's NRF launch (2026-w02-standards-google-ucp-launch). Ulta AI on Ulta.com pairs first-party deployment with UCP-enabled agent surfaces, mirroring the dual posture Walmart adopted after retiring centralised checkout (2026-w13-aeo-openai-instant-checkout-shutdown, 2026-w13-pilots-walmart-chatgpt-conversion-data). The launch sits inside the AI Mode shopping expansion (2026-w07-aeo-google-ai-mode-shopping-expansion) and precedes the Universal Cart launch (2026-w21-aeo-google-universal-cart) by four weeks. Beauty is the first vertical to receive a dedicated UCP retailer deployment, joining apparel and marketplaces represented in Stripe's Agentic Commerce Suite launch partners (2025-w50-payments-stripe-agentic-commerce-suite). The deployment doubles as the flagship case study for the Google Cloud Next 2026 stage.

  1. Google Cloud Press Corner
Issue 20
research

Walmart discloses ChatGPT Instant Checkout converted at one-third the rate of its own website

Walmart reports ChatGPT Instant Checkout achieved 1.18% conversion vs ~3.5% on Walmart.com; company pivots to embedding its Sparky agent inside ChatGPT instead.

The 1.18% versus 3.5% disclosure is the first quantified comparison of agentic-surface conversion against a retailer's own website in this archive, contrasting with the earlier 194% purchase-likelihood lift reported for Microsoft Copilot Checkout (2026-w02-payments-microsoft-copilot-checkout). The data triggers OpenAI's retirement of the centralised merchant-of-record model the same week (2026-w13-aeo-openai-instant-checkout-shutdown) and Walmart's pivot to embedding its Sparky agent directly inside ChatGPT — preserving the OpenAI partnership (2025-w42-pilots-walmart-openai-chatgpt-checkout) while moving from third-party checkout to first-party agent. The disclosure provides the empirical counterweight to McKinsey's $3-5 trillion sizing (2025-w42-aeo-mckinsey-agentic-commerce-study) by documenting per-funnel friction at one major retailer. Walmart's role as a Universal Commerce Protocol co-launch retailer (2026-w02-standards-google-ucp-launch) is unaffected.

  1. Search Engine Land
Issue 18
pilot

Santander and Mastercard complete Europe's first live end-to-end AI-agent payment

First fully authenticated AI-agent payment executed within Santander's regulated banking infrastructure via Mastercard Agent Pay in a controlled production test.

Santander's pilot is the second non-US authenticated agentic payment milestone for Mastercard Agent Pay (2025-w18-payments-mastercard-agent-pay), following the Australian first (2026-w05-pilots-mastercard-australia-first-agentic-payment) by five weeks. Execution inside Santander's regulated banking infrastructure — rather than a sandbox — tests the model against European supervisory regimes. The pilot precedes Visa's Agentic Ready Europe launch (2026-w11-payments-visa-agentic-ready-europe) with Barclays, HSBC, and Nationwide by one week, marking the moment both major card networks established European production footing within a single fortnight. The UK FCA's subsequent inclusion of agentic AI payments in its 2026 priorities (2026-w13-regulation-uk-fca-agentic-payments-priorities) cites the regulatory layer the Santander pilot operates within. The pilot uses the same Agentic Token model that went live for Citi and US Bank cardholders five months earlier (2025-w44-payments-mastercard-agent-pay-live-us).

  1. Mastercard Newsroom
Issue 15
pilot

Mastercard and Australian banks complete country's first authenticated agentic transactions

CBA and Westpac cards complete Australia's first fully authenticated agentic payments via Mastercard Agent Pay using Maincode's Matilda LLM in a controlled test.

The Australian pilot is the first authenticated agentic transaction outside the US for Mastercard Agent Pay (2025-w18-payments-mastercard-agent-pay), executed via CBA and Westpac — two of Australia's Big Four banks — using local LLM provider Maincode's Matilda model rather than a US foundation-model vendor. The structural pattern (network plus local issuers plus regional LLM) repeats four weeks later in Europe with Santander (2026-w10-pilots-santander-mastercard-europe-first-payment). The pilot follows the Citi and US Bank live-issuance milestone (2025-w44-payments-mastercard-agent-pay-live-us) by three months and precedes the Q1 2026 disclosure of near-universal global card coverage (2026-w18-payments-mastercard-agent-pay-q1-milestone). The Maincode involvement places a non-US frontier-model lab inside Mastercard's launch geography.

  1. Mastercard Newsroom
Issue 12
launch

Amazon rolls out auto-buy and agentic upgrades to Rufus for 250 million users

50+ Rufus enhancements include autonomous auto-buy at target price for US Prime members; 250 million customers used Rufus in 2025, up 149% year-over-year.

Rufus is the first AI shopping assistant deployed at quarter-billion-user scale, running on Amazon-internal infrastructure rather than a third-party agent surface. The auto-buy capability moves Amazon from search-assistance into autonomous transaction territory previously associated with external agents using Stripe-OpenAI's ACP (2025-w40-payments-stripe-openai-acp-instant-checkout) or Mastercard Agent Pay (2025-w18-payments-mastercard-agent-pay). The 149% year-over-year growth figure anchors the demand-side context for Shopify's Q1 2026 AI-traffic disclosure (2026-w19-aeo-shopify-q1-2026-ai-traffic). Amazon's parallel posture toward external agents is reflected in the Comet court order four months later (2026-w11-regulation-amazon-perplexity-court-order), drawing a structural line between first-party agent deployment and third-party agent access to account-protected surfaces. Auto-buy is the first major retailer-deployed autonomous purchase feature at consumer scale in this dataset.

  1. About Amazon
Issue 7
pilot

Walmart partners with OpenAI to enable ChatGPT Instant Checkout

US customers can purchase Walmart and Sam's Club products directly inside ChatGPT via Instant Checkout; Stripe powers payment processing.

Walmart's onboarding makes ChatGPT Instant Checkout the first AI-surface checkout to include a US big-box retailer, extending coverage that previously stopped at Etsy and Shopify merchants (2025-w40-payments-stripe-openai-acp-instant-checkout). Stripe handles the payment leg via Shared Payment Tokens. Five months later Walmart discloses that ChatGPT Instant Checkout converted at roughly a third of Walmart.com's rate (2026-w13-pilots-walmart-chatgpt-conversion-data), prompting OpenAI to retire the merchant-of-record model (2026-w13-aeo-openai-instant-checkout-shutdown) and Walmart to embed its Sparky agent directly inside ChatGPT instead. The pilot is the first data-rich case study of agentic-surface conversion economics in this dataset and informs the brand-native pivot across the AEO lane. Walmart's parallel role as a Universal Commerce Protocol co-launch retailer (2026-w02-standards-google-ucp-launch) places the company across both major AI-commerce protocol stacks.

  1. Walmart Corporate
Issue 5

What are agentic-commerce pilots?

Agentic-commerce pilots are live deployments where a real AI agent transacts with a real merchant on behalf of a real customer, against production payment rails — not lab demos or developer previews. The first wave (late 2025 through Q1 2026) covered ChatGPT Instant Checkout at Walmart, Rufus auto-buy at Amazon, AI-agent payments via Mastercard with Australian and European banks, and Gemini-powered checkout at Ulta Beauty via the Universal Commerce Protocol. Public conversion data is sparse but emerging; reported numbers are tracked here against the comparable web-traffic baseline.

Live agent-commerce deployments at retailers and financial institutions began landing in volume in late 2025. Walmart launched ChatGPT Instant Checkout with OpenAI in October 2025; Walmart disclosed in March 2026 that it achieved 1.18-percent conversion versus approximately 3.5-percent on Walmart's own website — the first quantitative pilot result published by either party. Amazon rolled out auto-buy and agentic upgrades to Rufus for 250 million users in November 2025. Mastercard and Australian banks completed Australia's first authenticated agentic transactions in January 2026; Santander and Mastercard completed Europe's first live end-to-end AI-agent payment in March 2026. Ulta Beauty deployed a Gemini-powered shopping agent and UCP agentic checkout in April 2026, the first major retailer to ship UCP end-to-end. The set of live deployments now spans the three card networks, two hyperscaler agents, and at least one open protocol. This hub tracks every public deployment, results disclosure, and pilot expansion across retailers, financial institutions, and AI-agent vendors.