Imagine telling your assistant, I need a new phone and plan, please handle it—then watching it compare carriers, apply credits, and schedule delivery while you sip coffee. That’s the promise of agentic commerce, and in this episode we unpack how it’s moving from hype to a real, secure transaction layer shaping how we buy everything from groceries to luxury fashion.

We start by demystifying what “agentic” really means for shoppers: AI that doesn’t just advise but acts, using shared rules like the Agentic Commerce Protocol to authenticate, check inventory, process payments, and confirm orders without the messy back-and-forth. Then we tackle the elephant in the checkout lane: a high-stakes clash between Amazon and Perplexity that could set the precedent for how third-party AI agents access closed ecosystems. Is your AI an extension of you, or an uninvited bot? We weigh the legal, security, and customer experience angles and ask who truly owns the customer relationship when a bot holds the cart.

From there, we go global. Alibaba’s Dian Xiaomi handled an eye-popping 300 million customer queries during Singles Day, showcasing how AI scales service without losing speed. In Europe and the U.S., Mango’s AI Stylist and Ralph Lauren’s Ask Ralph blend brand voice with real buying power, folding inspiration, sizing advice, and shoppable looks into a single conversation that follows through to delivery and returns. Along the way we share lessons from 2025 rollouts, highlight diversity as a driver of better AI outcomes, and sketch what 2026–27 could bring: proactive agents, AR-enhanced stores, agent-to-agent negotiation, and loyalty that measures your trust in a retailer’s assistant.

If you’re curious about where autonomy meets accountability—and how your next purchase might be just a sentence away—this is your roadmap. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves retail tech, and leave a review with your take: should retailers gatekeep third‑party agents or open the lanes for user choice?