Artificial intelligence could soon be coming for restaurants' online orders.
AI companies like OpenAI are developing so-called agents that can do things like browse the web, order and pay for things on a customer’s behalf.
The technology, known as "agentic commerce," raises a lot of questions for restaurants and other businesses that sell goods online. Namely, how is transacting with an agent different than with a human customer?
A new report published Thursday by POS and payments provider Global Payments explores some of the pros and cons of agentic commerce, a field that the company said is just starting to take shape.
Overall, it found that 72% of all businesses are somewhat familiar with the concept of agentic commerce, including 73% of restaurant and hospitality businesses. However, just 11% of restaurant operators said they’re very familiar with it. Meanwhile, about a third of all businesses said they’ve seen customers using agentic tools to buy from them. The data is based on a survey of more than 600 business leaders.
The report identified two ways agentic commerce could be beneficial to businesses including restaurants.
The first is that it’s expected to boost conversions, or the number of transactions that get completed. The report cited an analysis by financial firm Bernstein that found that agentic commerce could boost global ecommerce conversions by 1.5% to 2.5%. That may seem small, but restaurants’ online conversion rate is typically in the single digits, so any growth could make a big impact.
Earlier this month, Salesforce reported that agentic AI sources drove a 300% higher conversion rate than regular transactions during the busy holiday shopping season.
This is presumably because agents are designed to remove friction from the buying experience. Customers may be less likely to get cold feet at checkout if an AI assistant is doing that part for them. There’s also a belief that AI will be able to learn customers’ habits and tastes so that it will be able to find the “right” product for them.
Here’s another potential benefit: Agentic commerce could give restaurants a better idea of what prospective customers actually want.
Currently, if a new customer comes to a restaurant’s website, the business likely has no idea who they are or what they’re looking for. With agentic commerce, “because we allow the consumer to share their insights with the agents, the agent would be able to potentially share that insight with the merchant as well,” said Mark Nelsen, head of global consumer products for Visa, in the Global Payments report.
“What they’re looking for, their age, gender, budget and past buying habits. There’s tremendous value for the business in all that information, in addition to delivering on the sale.”
There will need to be agreements and integrations in place to allow that data to flow between the agent and the business, but it would certainly be valuable information to restaurants.
But agentic commerce is not without its risks, and the Global Payments report highlights some of these as well.
The first is security. As the report points out, payment security has historically focused on preventing sales to nonhumans. To clear the way for agents to buy things, there needs to be an authentication process. It could be similar to how digital wallet payments work, where the user may have to provide their fingerprint or a facial scan to make a payment.
“You are the human in the loop. You should be asked to validate what the agent is about to purchase on your behalf,” said Sukhmani Dev, head of digital and acceptance products, North America, at Mastercard, in the report.
This also creates a way for customers to dispute charges if an agent “goes rogue” and buys things without their approval.
Another issue is how, exactly, AI agents will decide what restaurants to patronize once they’ve been deployed by the customer. If there’s bias, or if businesses find a way to game the system, consumers could quickly lose trust in the technology.
Because of these risks, businesses are not totally sold on the idea of AI shoppers yet. When asked whether they would be concerned if an AI agent started buying from them on behalf of a customer, 42% said yes, 36% said no and 22% were not sure, according to Global Payments. Their biggest concern was security and fraud, followed by dispute resolution.
Consumers are not that crazy about them yet, either. The report cited a July YouGov poll that found that 14% of Americans had used an AI shopper, and only 4% were even interested in doing so.
“Agentic commerce sounds good in theory,” Global Payments concluded, “but authentic commerce is still king.”
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