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Checkout.com has thrown its weight behind the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), signalling a decisive industry shift towards AI-driven purchasing.
The move positions the payments group at the centre of an emerging commerce model in which autonomous agents—such as those embedded within ChatGPT—can discover products, compare prices and complete transactions on behalf of consumers.
Agentic Commerce Protocol
ACP is designed as an open standard that enables AI agents, merchants and users to transact within a trusted framework. By adopting it, Checkout.com will allow merchants to offer seamless, secure checkout through AI platforms, including OpenAI’s Instant Checkout feature.
Instead of redirecting users to external sites, purchases can be authenticated and settled directly within conversational interfaces.
The implications for digital commerce are significant. According to new Checkout.com research, agentic commerce could account for 21 per cent of monthly household spending within five years.
If realised, this would reshape the consumer-merchant relationship, shifting discovery and decision-making to intelligent intermediaries capable of acting with speed and context that human shoppers cannot match.
Meron Colbeci, Chief Product Officer at Checkout.com, describes the shift as a defining moment that requires new thinking from the payments sector.
The company is developing tools to ensure that merchants retain brand control and transparency even when AI agents stand between them and their customers.
This includes verified onboarding, robust identity management and enhanced fraud-prevention layers tailored to agent-initiated transactions.
Tokenised and Intelligent Payments
The company is also working closely with global networks and technology partners—including Visa, Mastercard and Google—to establish standards for secure, tokenised and intelligent payments.
The goal is to create a spine of interoperable infrastructure so that AI agents can operate safely across different channels, while merchants gain confidence that transactions remain compliant and verifiable.
Several enterprise merchants are already integrating ACP with Checkout.com’s systems to prepare for real-world deployment.
These early adopters are expected to pilot agent-based shopping experiences, demonstrating how AI can interpret user intent, gather product information and execute purchases without eroding customer relationships.
As businesses begin to imagine what autonomous shopping journeys could look like, Checkout.com argues that merchant readiness will determine adoption speed.
Customisable tools and guardrails will be essential, ensuring that the technology reflects each merchant’s risk appetite, pricing strategy and consumer base.
Agentic commerce is rapidly moving from a theoretical concept to an operational reality.
By backing ACP and investing in the infrastructure that will underpin this model, Checkout.com is positioning itself as a central architect of the next phase of digital payments—one where AI not only guides consumers, but increasingly acts for them.
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