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Glossary › Search and marketing

agentikus kereskedelem

in English: Agentic Commerce

basicspreading

A purchase where an AI agent finds, compares, and even pays for the product on your behalf, according to your instructions and budget.

In plain terms

Imagine you have a reliable personal shopper. You tell them what you need and how much you are willing to spend, and they go around the stores, compare offers, and finally buy what you asked for. In agentic commerce, an AI agent fills this role.

In a traditional online store, you click through everything: search, filter, add to cart, enter card details. Here, one sentence is enough, for example "I need a quiet washing machine under 150,000 forints that fits a depth of 45 centimeters", and the agent handles the rest. At most, you approve the purchase at the end.

For stores, this means the 'buyer' is increasingly a program. The agent does not look at pretty images or catchy slogans, but at precise product data, price, stock, and shipping conditions.

How it works

  1. You give a brief: in everyday language, you describe what you want and set the parameters (price cap, brand, deadline, what can be purchased independently).
  2. The agent gathers information: it collects offers from machine-readable product catalogs and websites, then narrows them down according to your criteria.
  3. Makes an offer: shows the best one or two options with reasoning, or decides itself if pre-authorized.
  4. Payment: the store and the agent process the order according to a shared standard (payment protocol). Instead of your card details, a substitute code (token) is typically transmitted, which is valid only for that merchant, up to a specified amount, and for a short time.
  5. Follow-up: order confirmation, delivery, and returns remain the merchant's responsibility, but the agent can monitor these and notify you.

An everyday example

You ask your AI assistant to find a birthday gift for your ten-year-old nephew for up to 15,000 Hungarian forints, arriving by Friday. The agent shows three ideas, you tap one, approve the payment, and it places the order. Where the store and the assistant support this, you do not even need to leave the chat window.

Who is affected

everyoneAs a buyer, you can save time with it, but you must know what authority you grant and who is liable if the agent chooses poorly.
entrepreneur, executiveIf agents cannot read your online store's product data, you may easily miss out on their recommendations.
marketerThe party to be persuaded is increasingly a program influenced by precise, structured data, while emotional advertising is less effective. → Marketing
developerYou must connect the store to the payment and catalog standards used by agents. → Code

A common misconception

MythThe agent can spend my money without my knowledge and without limits.
In realityIn current systems, you set the boundaries, and payment usually requires separate approval. Fully autonomous purchasing is currently rare and limited to narrow, pre-defined assignments.

Limits and risks

Similar, but not the same

Related concepts

Broader

AI-agent, agentic AI, e-kereskedelem

Narrower

shopping agent, agentic payment, Agentic Commerce Protocol, Agent Payments Protocol

On the edge

generative search engine optimization, AI search, AI visibility, Model Context Protocol, structured data

A brief history

The term spread in 2025. In spring, major card networks announced solutions supporting payments by agents (Visa Intelligent Commerce, Mastercard Agent Pay). In September 2025, Google introduced the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), and OpenAI, together with Stripe, published the Agentic Commerce Protocol and launched instant payment within ChatGPT in the United States (Instant Checkout). In January 2026, Google, together with major commercial partners including Shopify, presented a new open standard, the Universal Commerce Protocol.

Where things stand

It already works in production in the major AI assistants, payment networks and e-commerce platforms, but mainly in the United States and with a limited set of merchants. In-chat payment is spreading more slowly than expected in 2025: the purchase often still completes on the store's own site. Several standards compete with one another, and in Hungary preparation is so far more common than mass use.

Status: 2026 November

In the news

Appears in 54 Agent Age stories; the curve shows weekly occurrence in the news magazine.

Also known as

agentic commerce · agentikus kereskedelem · agent-based commerce · agent-based commerce · AI-agent shopping · agentic shopping · agentic checkout · A-commerce

Sources

This entry was machine-edited and has undergone machine expert review; the “In the news” section updates automatically from Agent Age stories.