What is Checkout handoff?
The checkout handoff is the transition in agentic commerce from 'the agent has decided to buy this SKU' to 'the order is confirmed.' During the handoff the agent asks the merchant's checkout three questions in rapid succession: is this exact variant still in stock, is the price still the same as the one quoted to the shopper, and what is the true landed cost (shipping, tax, delivery ETA). A wrong or slow answer to any of them drops the sale silently — most surfaces abort rather than surprise the shopper with a changed price or an out-of-stock item. The design principle is that the checkout endpoint is authoritative and must be fast and live, while the product feed is a cache; brands lose handoffs whenever the two drift apart.
Key statistics
- Price drift between the feed and the live checkout is a top cause of dropped agentic orders — the agent aborts rather than change the quoted price.
- Inventory must resolve at the variant level (size/color/SKU), not just the product level, or the agent abandons and often surfaces a competitor.
- Missing or slow shipping/tax computation stalls the handoff, and stalls are read by the surface as failures.