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Michelle Romero: Michelle.Romero@syf.com Tyler Allen: Tyler.Allen@syf.com
Article
October 16, 2026, 10:00 AM EDT
Key Insights:
AI is changing where shopping starts. Instead of browsing websites and comparing options themselves, customers can tell an AI assistant what they need and receive a recommendation based on the information it can find and evaluate.
Merchants have traditionally made their case across websites, emails, apps, account experiences and other customer communications, as well as near checkout by highlighting availability, service, financing, rewards and other benefits. In agentic commerce, a customer may bypass engaging directly with those channels and simply ask an AI agent what to choose. The agent needs the same information surfaced to it before it recommends what the customer should consider. If the details of those advantages are not readable by the agent, merchants may be excluded and customers may miss the offer that provides greater value.
A recommendation can be accurate yet incomplete if it identifies the right product and price but misses benefits that could change the decision, such as flexible financing, shipping speed or available discounts and rebates. Customers want confidence that the recommendation is considering everything that matters to them.
Recent Oxford Economics research conducted with Synchrony found that 60% of consumers would pause or stop using AI after a poor recommendation. Becoming agent ready means making the full value of your offer visible to AI so its recommendations account for more than product and price.
What Agent Readiness Means for Your Brand
You are agent ready when AI systems can find your products or services, interpret the available information accurately and recognize the factors that may make your offer a better fit for a customer. That information may come from your website, emails, apps, account experiences and loyalty communications, as well as from product, inventory and operational systems that provide data through APIs, feeds and other integrations. The information an agent needs to make the best recommendation goes beyond product and pricing:
Consider a customer planning a home improvement project. One retailer may have the lowest listed price. Another may offer better availability, installation support, stronger service and financing that gives the customer additional flexibility. A discount tied to the retailer’s store credit card could also lower the final price. The better option depends on the details of the customer’s project, their preferences, timing and budget.
If the agent sees only product and price, it may miss your service, availability or payment flexibility. You could lose consideration, and the customer could miss the option that better fits the project and budget.
Financing, rewards and promotions have traditionally become most visible near checkout. In agentic commerce, you need to make them visible earlier because the recommendation may determine whether your brand is considered.
3 Steps Merchants and Brands Can Take to Become Agent Ready
No single platform will define how customers shop with AI. Customers are likely to move among merchant-owned agents, established platforms with AI capabilities, digital wallets and new experiences that have yet to emerge.
Rather than prepare for one platform, focus on three things you control: what AI systems can see, the information those systems use and the part of the customer journey where a more complete recommendation could matter most.
1. Assess Whether AI Can Find and Understand Your Offer
Start by testing whether AI systems can find your products and services, understand what is available and represent your offer accurately. Focus on whether your information is complete and current, accessible to automated systems and clear about the benefits that distinguish your brand.
Synchrony is helping its merchant partners identify and prioritize these gaps through an Agentic Commerce Readiness Assessment. Partners provide their website and answer a focused set of questions, and the assessment combines those responses with observable website signals to help evaluate accessibility, completeness and clarity. It is designed to identify outdated or incomplete content, missing product and service details and information that automated systems may struggle to interpret.
Turning those findings into action often requires coordination across marketing, merchandising, ecommerce, operations, technology and payments. The gaps may appear on a website but fixing them can involve the teams that manage product information, customer experience and the systems that provide data to AI-driven experiences.
2. Make Your Full Value Clear to AI
Traditional SEO remains important, but agent readiness also requires information that AI systems can find, interpret and use in a recommendation. Focus on three priorities: (1) making your products and services discoverable to AI, (2) keeping information about pricing, availability, policies and customer benefits accurate and consistent across websites, customer communications and connected systems and (3) clearly explaining how service, financing, rewards and other benefits add value so an agent can factor them into its recommendation.
That starts with accurate, current and machine-readable information about your products, services, inventory, pricing, availability, shipping and returns. You also need to make the factors that distinguish your offer clear early in the shopping journey, including service, expertise, installation, protections, loyalty benefits, rewards and financing.
Personal AI agents add a new wrinkle because relevant information may reach them from places merchants have not traditionally considered part of the shopping journey. Meta’s recently launched Muse, for example, can connect to a customer’s email and other apps to help manage tasks and make purchases. Your full value therefore needs to be represented accurately, clearly and consistently across emails, account experiences and other customer communications. An agent may use that information to recognize a reward, promotion or financing benefit already available to the customer and factor it into the recommendation.
Synchrony is helping its merchant partners apply this work through an AEO/GEO Discoverability Playbook focused on how AI systems find, interpret and present information about their products, services and customer benefits. The playbook provides practical guidance and prioritizes next steps a partner should consider taking to improve discoverability.
3. Test the Part of the Journey That Matters Most
Agentic shopping can be understood in three stages: 1. Chat, when the agent finds relevant products and merchants; 2. Decide, when it compares the options and recommends a choice; and 3. Buy, when the customer approves and completes the purchase.
You do not need to test all three stages at once. Start with Chat if AI struggles to find your offer, Decide if recommendations omit important value or Buy if your technology and partner connections are in place to test authentication, approval and checkout. For the selected stage, test whether the agent has the information and capabilities needed to help the customer continue without losing important context. The results should show where information is missing, where recommendations fall short and which capabilities deserve deeper investment.
How Synchrony Is Testing and Preparing for Agentic Commerce
Synchrony is testing Chat, Decide and Buy with select partners, including pilots that allow customers with an open Synchrony credit line to see relevant information and financing options within an AI shopping experience. The pilots test whether agents retrieve the correct information, present it clearly and obtain the customer’s approval.
Synchrony is also developing APIs and shared connections aligned with emerging open standards, helping determine how partner-owned AI experiences can access and present account information securely and which authentication and servicing capabilities they require.
Synchrony is exploring how an agent in the Synchrony Marketplace could help test how financing, rewards, savings and offers could appear in AI-native shopping and influence customer decisions. Separately, Synchrony’s collaboration with OpenAI is examining how these elements could be represented in AI-native shopping experiences.
For private-label store card programs, Synchrony is developing an integration roadmap for how eligible customers could use their Synchrony-issued card in third-party wallets and AI-driven checkout experiences, reducing manual card entry and surfacing relevant financing and promotional offers. The roadmap identifies the technology, permissions and partner connections that would be required as Synchrony continues to build and test with partners in market. Together, these projects aim to preserve the information and benefits customers need as they discover, compare and buy through AI, while helping brands stand out.
Where Merchants and Brands Can Start With Agentic Commerce
The appropriate starting point depends on where you are in your journey. You may need to improve discoverability first, or you may be ready to test account connections, financing or payment experiences. These efforts can help you decide what to improve now and where deeper investment makes sense.
AI agents are increasingly influencing which products customers see, which tradeoffs they consider and which brands make the short list. Merchants have an opportunity to shape that future by making their value clearer, improving the information agents use and testing where a better recommendation can create a better customer experience.
The merchants that start now will help define how AI-powered shopping works for their customers and their businesses. Synchrony is ready to work alongside our partners to assess readiness, improve discoverability and test the capabilities that can bring their full value into the next generation of commerce. Together, we can build experiences that give customers greater confidence and help merchants earn consideration in new ways.