What is Agentic checkout?
Agentic checkout is a purchase completed by an AI agent, inside the assistant, against the merchant's own checkout, after the shopper approves. Mechanically it has three parts: a machine-callable checkout the agent can drive without rendering a human web page (create cart, apply shopper details, confirm price and availability, submit order); a delegated payment path in which the shopper's payment method reaches the merchant as a scoped, single-transaction credential rather than a raw card number; and an order-and-fulfilment callback that streams status (paid, shipped, delivered, refunded) back to the surface. The fragile moment is the checkout handoff, where the agent re-checks live inventory, price, and landed cost — and aborts if any disagree with what it quoted the shopper.
Key statistics
- The checkout handoff re-checks variant-level stock, price parity, and landed cost live at confirm time — feed-level 'in stock' is not sufficient.
- Surfaces gate agentic checkout more tightly than discovery: regulated categories are often citable but not one-tap buyable.
- The brand stays the merchant of record; the agent is a checkout client that accepts orders through one additional door.