Definition
Shopping assistants in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and others now search stores, compare options and, increasingly, complete purchases. Payments and platform companies are building the rails: OpenAI and Stripe launched the Agentic Commerce Protocol in September 2025, and Google announced the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) the same month.
For retailers, the question is whether an agent can read their store: find products, trust the price and stock, understand delivery and returns, and reach checkout. Stores that hide that information behind scripts, pop-ups or bot walls lose the sale before a person ever sees it.