Agentic Commerce, 18 Months In. Check out my latest research on the current stat
By Kayla E Phillips · October 23, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Agentic Commerce, 18 Months In.
Check out my latest research on the current state of agentic commerce: https://lnkd.in/eJX8pynz
An honest take on where the market stands today, who is positioned to win, where value is accruing, and the whitespace opportunities that still exist.
What’s been most revealing from conversations with agentic commerce leaders the past few months is the disparity between the buzzy headlines vs the actual strategies that companies are taking to build defensible moats in this space. There’s a real gap between noise vs action.
Agentic commerce feels like less of a greenfield opportunity and more of an extension of the existing commerce/payments market today, with most value still expected to accrue to the existing leaders who already own the end-user relationship, the merchant network, or the settlement rails.
I'd encourage builders to look at the bottlenecks that are still hindering growth in this space:
- KYA, agent identity, authorization - Agent governance, policies, and controls are still quite limited and simple vs trad corporate card controls that offer far greater customization and granular policy. Agentic payments products need to first reach feature parity with what exists in trad commerce for users to consider adopting.
- Merchant readiness and acceptance - Many digital storefronts are not machine-readable, and a meaningful share of merchants block agents outright. Merchants rightfully have concerns about agent fraud protection, security, and liability (i.e. do they incur the chargeback liability when an agent buys something it shouldn’t have?). Fragmented protocols, standards, and identity solutions also give merchants reasons to wait until some of the dust settles and there’s a clearer path forward for them to engage with agents. Startups can build merchant solutions that alleviate some of these risks and headaches for merchants.
- B2B - A lot of the data that B2B agents need to build powerful enterprise solutions sits trapped in ERP custom fields, procurement email threads, and PDF contracts. Tackling the B2B opportunity requires first building the pipes to collect this data at scale before existing workflows can be automated. Whoever does this effectively will benefit from the B2B flywheel: more transactions, better accuracy, more spend authority, higher switching costs. Opportunity exists for corp spend mgmt fintechs, vertical-specific startups, and enterprise agentic policy/security/knowledge graph startups to all compete for market share.
Agents will only transact at scale once consumers, merchants, and finance teams trust them with real spending authority. The rules, controls, and data behind that trust are still being developed, and the companies focused on this will shape how agentic commerce works once the volume arrives.
If you’re building or investing in agentic commerce, please reach out. I’d love to hear from you!