LAS VEGAS — Financial technology companies are preparing for a future in which most consumer purchases are made by AI agents, not flesh-and-blood buyers, Dan reports from the floor of Money 20/20.

• 🛍️ It's called agentic commerce, and it may come sooner than you think.

How it works: The basic idea is that people would have AI "agents" do much of their shopping for them, from staples to more discretionary items.

• Those agents would need access not only to a consumer's shopping preferences, but also to their money.
• That's why these agents may be offered by trusted banks or fintech companies, which also could enable them to handle services such as investment and wealth management — much like how they already provide automated bill pay.

🔎 Zoom in: The promise is less personal interaction, thus saving time, yet more actual personalization.

• There also could be a revival of bartering, albeit automated, as consumer agents negotiate with merchant agents for the best price.

🙋🏻‍♀️ Yes, but: Lots of questions remain before full-scale implementation, beyond getting the tech to work and identifying the key players.

• The biggest may be around liability. Who gets stuck with the bill if an agent buys something the consumer didn't actually want (at least, at that price)? There's existing law around third-party purchasing authorization, but it was written with humans in mind.
• Merchants and payment providers are wary that an army of shopper bots could be unleashed, overwhelming their systems and making it tougher to identify legitimate intent.
• Finally, many people still love the tactile experience of actual shopping, which is why e-commerce remains just a piece of the retail pie.

The bottom line: We already trust "robots" to help fly our planes and drive our cars. Enabling them to spend and manage our money isn't too big a leap.

One of the big questions: What's the most efficient way to process agentic commerce payments?

🤑 Behind the scenes: Many in the Money20/20 crowd favor the use of stablecoins, or cryptocurrencies tied to the U.S. dollar or other fiat currencies, due to their real-time capabilities.

• "Stablecoins" and "agentic commerce" were probably the biggest buzzwords this week in Las Vegas, often used in the same sentence.
• Others view stablecoins either as a transitory technology, or one not needed at all, as other real-time settlement technologies improve.

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