Agentic Commerce: The US is already letting AI do the shopping. What about Czech websites?

On July 2, 2026, Visa announced the first live payments made by AI agents at European merchants during its payment forum in Paris. Over 30 European banks—including Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, and Revolut—can now approve transactions for AI agents. It sounds like a breakthrough. In reality, it’s proof of how far ahead America is, where AI agents have already been routinely shopping and paying for a year. Let's take a look at what agentic commerce actually means, where we stand right now, and most importantly, what it means for websites serving customers in the Czech Republic.

What is Agentic Commerce?

Shopping handled not by a human clicking through a website, but by an autonomous AI agent. The agent operates in three distinct steps:

1. Information gathering: It understands context, preferences, budget, and timeframe from a prompt like "find us a family beach vacation, first week of August, up to CZK 80,000".

2. Comparison: It evaluates options across websites, reviews, prices, and delivery times, proposing 1–2 optimal solutions.

3. Execution: It completes the purchase—ordering, paying via a tokenized card within your preset limit, tracking delivery, and handling returns if needed.

The key difference compared to a traditional chatbot is autonomy: the agent doesn't just advise, it acts.

According to Prophet’s "The 2026 AI-Powered Consumer Report", 54% of people already view AI agents acting on their behalf as useful, and the proportion of people using GenAI in daily life jumped from 45% to 73% in just two years. The question is no longer "if", but "how fast" and "where".

The US is Already Shopping Differently

Bank of America has its financial AI agent, Erica, which handled over 3 billion interactions with 50 million users as of August 2025, adding another 58 million users monthly. Walmart launched its shopping assistant Sparky directly inside ChatGPT, though the path there wasn't straightforward.

OpenAI's original "Instant Checkout" solution converted about three times worse than buying directly on Walmart.com. Consequently, Walmart pulled it and replaced it with its own agent, Sparky, which today converts at 70% of Walmart.com’s performance—a dramatic improvement. This highlights that agentic commerce is still finding its footing through trial and error, primarily in the US market.

Numbers from last year's US holiday season confirm this momentum:

• According to Adobe, e-commerce traffic from AI sources grew 693% year-over-year (and by 769% in November), converting 31% better than other channels.

• Semrush reports that visitors coming from AI answers convert 4.4× better across industries than traditional organic traffic.

• McKinsey estimates that agentic commerce could generate $3–5 trillion in revenue globally by 2030, with North America holding the largest share at 38% in 2025.

What About Europe and the Czech Republic?

The picture here is different. According to McKinsey, 63% of European consumers are already using AI to compare products, brands, and prices, and over half would be willing to let AI complete the entire purchase. The willingness is clearly there. What’s missing is the infrastructure.

Mastercard and Santander executed the first complete payment by an AI agent in Europe only this March, but it was a pilot in a controlled banking sandbox rather than a commercial launch. Visa launched its first European wave just this month via UK and Western European banks—no Czech bank is among them yet. McKinsey sums it up succinctly: "AI's decision-making influence is already here; execution is just arriving."

In the Czech Republic, we are seeing initial sparks rather than a wildfire:

• In May 2026, Slevomat launched its app directly inside ChatGPT.

• A month prior, insurance comparator Suri.cz became the first approved Czech app on the platform.

For now, these serve strictly as a "discovery" layer. The AI recommends and links out, but no Czech website has experienced an autonomous payment executed by an agent just yet.

What Should Czech Websites Do Right Now?

Precisely because full autonomous payments aren't right around the corner yet, now is the exact right time to prepare—not when the infrastructure finally arrives on our doorstep. Specifically, it comes down to three layers:

• Be readable for AI right now: Even without agent payments, AI is already influencing purchasing decisions (as proven by the 63% of Europeans comparing via AI). This requires structured data (schema.org), clear and up-to-date attributes (price, stock status, delivery times), and product pages an agent can easily "understand."

• Build the trustworthiness agents rely on: Reviews, transparent terms and conditions, and clearly stated return policies. Agents evaluate all of these alongside price. If your site lacks machine-readable trust signals, you simply drop out of the agent's recommendations.

• Stay ahead of the technical side: Visa Intelligent Commerce, Mastercard Agent Pay, and Google’s AP2 protocol will sooner or later require API integrations and support for tokenized payments. When the first Czech bank enables such transactions, you want to be among the merchants who are ready—not those still trying to figure out what it all means.

Feel free to reach out if you'd like to discuss how to get your website ready for this. I'd be happy to chat over a good cup of coffee.

Looking forward,

Anička

Glossary / Technical Terms

• Agentic commerce: A shopping process where an autonomous AI agent acts on behalf of the customer—from search and selection to payment and post-purchase service.

• AI agent: Software combining LLMs, memory, tools (APIs), and the ability to make decisions and act independently, rather than just answer questions.

• GenAI: Generative Artificial Intelligence (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude) powering today's agents.

• Tokenized payment: A digital stand-in for a payment card that an agent is authorized to use safely within predefined limits (e.g., Visa Intelligent Commerce, Mastercard Agent Pay).

• AP2 (Agent Payments Protocol): An open standard from Google for payments initiated by AI agents, joined by both Visa and Mastercard.

• Instant Checkout: OpenAI's solution designed to allow users to complete purchases directly within ChatGPT. Following weak conversion rates, it is being replaced by solutions like Walmart Sparky.