The Death of Apps: How Agentic Commerce Will Revolutionize Digital Retail
Muhammad Hamza
AI Platforms & Strategy @NETSOL | Stanford GSB Ignite | University College London (UCL) Alumnus
In the rapidly evolving landscape of digital commerce, we are witnessing a paradigm shift that could render traditional e-commerce apps and quick commerce platforms obsolete. The future of shopping isn't through apps but through AI agents that can find, select, and purchase products on our behalf.
This is not sci-fi; early signals of agentic commerce are already here.
OpenAI ’s introduction of ChatGPT “Operator” in early 2025 showed how a conversational AI could plug into real services to get things done. With launch partners like DoorDash, Uber etc., OpenAI demonstrated the value of “generative AI taking agency on behalf of shoppers.” In practical terms, you might say, “Book me a cheap flight to NYC next week and a hotel in Manhattan,” and the AI will handle the entire process.
This transformation is being accelerated by recent innovations in agentic payments from major financial institutions like Visa and Mastercard , creating an entirely new commerce ecosystem. With e-commerce companies integrating their APIs directly with payment providers and AI platforms like OpenAI and Anthropic , we're moving toward a more seamless, frictionless commercial experience where the user interface becomes secondary to the intelligent agents working behind the scenes. Companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google (with its Gemini AI) are racing to perfect these interfaces.
The Decline of Traditional E-Commerce and Quick Commerce
App Fatigue and Mobile Experience Evolution
Consumers are experiencing app fatigue. The initial enthusiasm for dedicated shopping apps has waned, with users increasingly preferring mobile websites over downloading yet another app. As technology research shows, more than 80% of IT, R&D, and marketing professionals believe apps could be obsolete, with forward-thinking organizations expected to implement more flexible technologies like Progressive Web Apps within the next year. This signals a fundamental shift in how consumers want to interact with commerce platforms.
Consumer Behaviour are Evolving
People have grown comfortable using voice assistants and chat interfaces for simple tasks (“Alexa, reorder xyz”). Now with more powerful AI, they’re starting to delegate complex decisions to digital assistants. According to Visa’s Chief Product and Strategy Officer Jack Forestell , we’re on the cusp of a new era where “people will have AI agents browse, select, purchase and manage on their behalf” He compares it directly to the last big platform shifts – “just like the shift from physical shopping to online, and from online to mobile,” this is “a new standard for a new era of commerce.”
In other words, after e-commerce and mobile commerce, AI-driven commerce is the third wave that will redefine consumer expectations. Once a consumer experiences simply telling an agent what they want (“Find me a good office chair under $300 and buy it for me”) and having it delivered, the prospect of manually navigating dozens of apps and websites starts to feel like flipping through a paper catalog, outdated and cumbersome.
The economics of discovery are changing
Brands today spend billions on ads and search optimization to attract eyeballs to their apps and sites. But if those eyeballs are increasingly pointed at AI assistants, the traditional funnels are disrupted. As a recent Fast Company piece warned retailers: “AI agents are now making purchasing decisions… If you’re not optimizing for AI search, there’s a good chance your traffic and revenue will decline before you even realize what’s happening.”
The Rise of Agentic Commerce
Beyond Chatbots: True Commercial Autonomy
Agentic commerce represents a significant evolution beyond simple chatbots or conversational AI. Unlike traditional chatbots that operate on pre-set rules and responses, agentic commerce systems function autonomously, making independent decisions and learning from interactions to improve over time. These agents can perform end-to-end commerce tasks without human intervention, from product discovery to purchase completion.
In this new paradigm, shopping becomes less about browsing and more about intent. Rather than scrolling through endless product listings, consumers can simply state what they need, and AI agents handle the rest.
Agentic Payments: The Financial Infrastructure
Visa and Mastercard Lead the Charge
Both Visa and Mastercard have recognized this shift and are positioning themselves at the forefront of the agentic commerce revolution. Visa recently unveiled Visa Intelligent Commerce, a technology designed specifically to enable AI agents to find and buy products. Similarly, Mastercard announced Agent Pay, its agentic payments program designed to integrate with agentic AI to revolutionize commerce.
How Agentic Payments Work
The technology behind these initiatives replaces traditional card details with tokenized digital credentials, similar to how Apple Pay or Google Pay function. Jack Forestell , Visa's chief product and strategy officer, explains: "Getting a payment card credential to an agent is tech that's similar to Apple Pay or Google Pay-the agent gets a token that can only be used by that agent". This allows agents to make secure transactions while giving users control over what the agent is permitted to purchase on their behalf.
Building Trust in the System
For agentic commerce to succeed, it must be trusted by all participants in the ecosystem. Visa and Mastercard are addressing this by requiring trusted AI agents to be registered and verified before they can make secure payments on behalf of users. Enhanced tokenization technology enables payments to be initiated through conversational interfaces and conducted at millions of merchants supporting online commerce today.
Enabling Technologies and Protocols
Model Context Protocol: The Agent-Payment Bridge
Anthropic's Model Context Protocol (MCP) is emerging as a critical piece of infrastructure, an open standard connecting AI apps to tools and data. MCP payments are payment operations that an AI agent executes through an MCP server, which sits in front of a payments API. MCP could enables agents to initiate and manage payment operations within their conversational or task flows, without redirecting users to external checkout portals. This reduces friction, increases trust, and allows for real-time, context-aware transactions.
Agent-to-Agent (A2A)
Google's A2A (Agent-to-Agent) protocol is not specifically designed for payments, but it can be used to facilitate them. It could be a foundational layer for scaling agentic commerce by enabling AI agents to securely communicate, negotiate, and transact with each other across ecosystems. It would allow buyer, seller, logistics, and payment agents to coordinate complex transactions autonomously, reduce friction, and ensure trust through standardized authentication and permissions. Much like TCP/IP enabled the internet, A2A could create a universal language for intelligent agents, making commerce truly ambient and composable; turning tasks like “plan a birthday party under $300” into fully delegated, multi-agent workflows.
The New Power Players in Commerce
AI Platforms as Commerce Enablers
AI platforms like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Microsoft are becoming central players in the commerce ecosystem. Visa's partnership with Anthropic, IBM , Microsoft, Mistral AI , OpenAI, Perplexity , Samsung Electronics , and Stripe demonstrates the importance of these AI platforms in enabling agentic commerce. Similarly, Mastercard is collaborating with Microsoft to integrate Microsoft's AI technologies with Mastercard's payment solutions.
Payment Networks as Critical Infrastructure
Payment networks remain the critical infrastructure upon which agentic commerce is built. As Visa CEO Ryan McInerney notes, "As new ways to pay emerge, they need to run on a network that is always on – that is safe, secure, scalable and relentlessly innovating". The established payment networks bring trust and scale to agentic commerce, processing billions of transactions securely.
Platform Owners as Distribution Channels
Companies like Apple , Google, OpenAI, Microsoft etc., that control major platforms will play a crucial role in the distribution of agentic commerce capabilities. Apple's AI agents could enhance how teams collaborate and manage work by intelligently streamlining tasks and enhancing efficiency. As platform owners integrate AI agents into their ecosystems, they will create powerful distribution channels for agentic commerce.
The Unified User Experience
From Fragmented Apps to Seamless Commerce
The future of shopping is converging toward a single, intelligent interface, your personal AI agent. Rather than hopping between apps or websites, users will simply speak or message their needs, and the agent will coordinate everything behind the scenes from finding the best deal to completing payment and logistics. The user experiences one seamless interaction, while the complexity is handled invisibly by the AI.
Ubiquitous Commerce Through Conversation
The shift toward more conversational, natural interfaces means commerce can happen anywhere, anytime. Whether through voice assistants, messaging platforms, or embedded in productivity tools, agentic commerce removes the boundaries between different commercial contexts. This ubiquity makes commerce more accessible and integrated into daily life.
Setting Parameters and Maintaining Control
Despite the autonomous nature of agentic commerce, users maintain control through parameters and preferences. Visa's implementation allows users to specify how long they want their agent to search for products, how much they're willing to spend, and even designate specific merchants they want their agent to consider. This balances autonomy with user control, addressing potential concerns about AI overreach.
Implications for Businesses
Adapting to the Agentic Economy
For businesses, adapting to agentic commerce will require rethinking digital strategy. Instead of focusing on app development or website optimization, businesses will need to ensure their product catalogs and APIs are accessible to AI agents. This shift demands new technical capabilities and partnerships with AI platforms and payment providers.
Opportunities Across Business Sizes
Agentic commerce offers opportunities for businesses of all sizes. For SMBs, it can help address limited resources, reduce customer acquisition costs, and level the playing field with larger competitors. For mid-market and enterprise businesses, it offers improved operational efficiency, enhanced customer experience, and significant cost savings through automation.
Strategic Considerations for the Transition
As businesses prepare for this transition, they should focus on several key areas: ensuring product data is structured and accessible to AI agents; partnering with the right payment providers that support agentic payments; and considering how their brand experience translates in an agent-mediated context where direct consumer interaction may be reduced.
Talent Demand Changes
The rise of agentic commerce brings significant talent and hiring implications for businesses. Here are the key shifts companies will need to prepare for:
With AI agents relying on data access, demand will grow for backend developers and API architects who can expose product, inventory, and order systems in secure, scalable ways.
Businesses will need more AI product managers, data engineers, and prompt specialists to ensure product data is structured, discoverable, and personalized for agent-based interactions. Cybersecurity experts will gain compounding importance to protect agents workflows.
As visual interfaces fade, roles like conversation designers and agent UX strategists will rise focusing on crafting how users interact with agents, not screens.
Just as SEO was crucial for web, AI optimization specialists will emerge to ensure brands rank well in agent decisions using metadata, reviews, and pricing signals effectively.
Product, marketing, and ops teams will need training to understand AI-mediated journeys, design for agent interfaces, and support testing where agents not users drive actions.
Conclusion: Preparing for the Agentic Future
The shift from app-based commerce to agent-based commerce represents one of the most significant transformations in retail since the advent of e-commerce itself. With major financial institutions like Visa and Mastercard building the payment infrastructure, AI platforms developing the intelligence, and protocols like MCP and A2A reducing friction, we're witnessing the early stages of a revolution in how people shop and pay.
In closing, the decline of traditional e-commerce and quick commerce apps is not a sign that digital commerce is slowing. It’s a sign of the next leap forward. Mobile-first shopping was the second chapter of a story that started with the web. Now, agentic commerce is emerging as the third chapter, one that could fundamentally rewrite the how, where, and who of commerce.
In a recent letter to software suppliers, Pat Opet , Global CISO at J.P. Morgan warned that SaaS, AI, and agentic workflows are accelerating systemic risks and called for security to be prioritized by design. With the rise of AI and agentic workflows, these risks are accelerating. We must prioritize security by design, rethink integration models, and protect our interconnected systems.
Mobile apps and checkout pages won’t disappear overnight, but their primacy is fading. In their place, AI-driven agents and their invisible hand are rising. It’s a future where the entire world of buying and selling is at your command through a single interface, as seamless and unified as having an expert human assistant yet far more scalable.
For those of us in the industry, this is a moment to lean in and innovate. The interfaces may be changing, but the goal remains the same: to serve customers better. Those who embrace this shift early will be well-positioned to thrive in the agentic economy, while those who cling to traditional app-based models may find themselves increasingly irrelevant.