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Michelle Romero: Michelle.Romero@syf.com Tyler Allen: Tyler.Allen@syf.com
Article
May 18, 2026, 9:00 AM EDT
Key Takeaways
What Is Agentic Commerce?
Agentic commerce is AI-powered shopping where consumers can search, compare, decide, and purchase products directly within an AI experience.
At its simplest, agentic commerce means shopping through an AI assistant or AI agent. At its most advanced, it’s an intelligent digital commerce experience that can understand a shopper’s needs, answer questions, recommend products, surface financing options, and help complete a purchase—all in one conversation.
As generative AI and conversational commerce continue to evolve, shopping is becoming less about navigating websites and more about asking questions and receiving personalized recommendations in real time.
How Does Agentic Commerce Work?
Imagine you’re shopping for a new vacuum cleaner. With agentic commerce, the shopping journey could look like this:
You tell an AI assistant:
“I need a new vacuum for pet hair under $300. I live in an apartment and want something quiet.”
The AI agent understands your needs and begins searching for products that match your preferences.
The AI assistant compares products and recommends several options, explaining why each one fits your needs. It may also show pricing, availability, reviews, and financing offers from participating merchants.
Instead of opening multiple tabs or visiting different retailer websites, the information is delivered in one streamlined AI-powered shopping experience.
Once you decide, you can simply say:
“Buy the second one.”
The AI agent can then help complete the transaction without requiring the traditional checkout flow of manually adding products to carts, entering payment information, or moving across multiple websites.
That’s the promise of agentic commerce: chat, decide, and buy in one connected experience.
How Payments Work in AI Shopping
As AI-powered commerce grows, trust and security remain essential.
A simple way to think about agentic commerce payments is this:
When you shop in a physical store and insert your card into a payment terminal, the cashier does not see your card number. The payment processor securely handles the transaction in the background.
In agentic commerce, the AI agent acts like the cashier, while payment processors and merchants continue managing the secure payment infrastructure behind the scenes.
In many cases, actual card numbers are not shared directly. Instead, secure tokenized payments, digital stand-ins for card information, help protect customer data during transactions.
So Is Agentic Commerce Safe?
Shopping with AI agents is designed to be as safe as shopping online or in stores today.
Secure payment processing, tokenization, trusted merchant integrations, and evolving AI commerce standards all play a role in helping protect consumers and build trust in AI-powered shopping experiences.
Why Agentic Commerce Matters Right Now
“Agentic commerce is coming fast. Just as early leaders in e-commerce reshaped entire industries, the brands that lean in now will set the pace for the years ahead,” said Mike Storiale, SVP Innovation, Payments, and AI
Consumers are increasingly using generative AI for search, product discovery, and shopping recommendations. That behavior is quickly reshaping digital commerce.
A recent Synchrony study found that:
The broader AI commerce market is also accelerating:
As shopping shifts from search bars to conversations, companies are preparing for a future where AI-assisted purchasing becomes part of everyday commerce.
How Is Synchrony Using Agentic Commerce?
Synchrony is already working with trusted retail, platform, and technology partners to enable AI-assisted shopping and payments.
Across discovery, financing, and checkout experiences, Synchrony is helping consumers:
At the same time, Synchrony is collaborating with partners, AI companies, and industry groups to help shape the standards, integrations, and security expectations for agent-based payments and AI commerce.
Security and trust remain central as Synchrony continues investing in AI-powered commerce experiences.
Synchrony’s Core Pillars to Lead with Agentic Commerce
Agentic commerce is reshaping the shopping journey around three core behaviors:
Synchrony’s strategy aligns directly to this conversational commerce model.
The company is focused on helping consumers discover financing options within AI experiences, making financing information easier to access during decision-making moments, and ensuring payment and private label products work seamlessly within emerging AI-powered checkout systems.
Discovery is becoming one of the most important parts of AI-powered commerce.
As more consumers use generative AI tools for search and shopping recommendations, Synchrony is investing in Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to help make Synchrony and partner financing offers more discoverable inside AI-led search experiences.
This builds on Synchrony’s existing expertise across:
Synchrony has already been testing GenAI-enabled discovery experiences through Synchrony Marketplace and other AI-powered search experiences designed to help shoppers connect with merchants and financing solutions more easily.
Because shopping increasingly starts with a question, Synchrony is focused on helping ensure the answers and financing options are there when consumers need them.
As consumers ask more shopping and financing questions through AI assistants, Synchrony is working to make financing information available at the most relevant moments in the customer journey.
This includes integrations with AI agents and future Synchrony app experiences designed to provide financing support directly within conversational shopping environments.
Whether a customer asks about payment options, financing availability, or private label offers, the goal is to help provide clear, useful information within the AI-powered experience itself.
The focus is simple: make financing easier to understand and easier to access wherever customers are shopping.
The final part of the strategy is marking sure customers can still easily access Synchrony financing options as the shopping experiences changes.
As more people use AI tools, apps, and digital payment experiences to shop, Synchrony is paying attention to how these new experiences are evolving, and how financing (with us and our retail partners) can fit into them naturally and safely.
This includes exploring ways customers can view financing options, payment choices, or special offers directly within AI- assisted shopping and checkout experiences. .
The goal is to make financing information simple, secure, and easy to access wherever customers choose to shop.
The Path Forward
“As shopping shifts from search bars to conversations, our job is to make sure our partners’ offers are visible in those moments—while keeping financing simple, secure, and easy to use,” said Rachel Moore, SVP Incubation and Emerging Payments.
Agentic commerce is quickly becoming a new front door to shopping.
Consumers are increasingly turning to AI-powered experiences for discovery, recommendations, and purchasing decisions. In response, Synchrony is investing in the partnerships, integrations, payment experiences, and AI-enabled discovery tools needed to support this shift in digital commerce.
By helping shape AI commerce standards, investing in conversational shopping experiences, and enabling financing within AI-powered ecosystems, Synchrony is positioning itself to support merchants and consumers as shopping continues to evolve.
The future of commerce may start with a conversation, but it should still end with confidence. Together with our partners, Synchrony is leading the way.