Best Agentic Commerce Providers for Retailers 2026

shoppa is the best starting agentic commerce provider for an Australian retailer that wants customers to find products and buy on its own site. Its AI shopping agent uses your catalogue and store documents, then keeps product discovery, payment and order support in the same chat. You keep the conversation on your site, in your branding.

For sales through external AI channels, your commerce platform is the next provider to consider. Google and OpenAI help shoppers discover products. Visa and Mastercard handle payment infrastructure. They solve different parts of the purchase, so a board’s agentic commerce plan needs more than one vendor name.

Types of Agentic Commerce Provider

Agentic commerce providers fall into four groups, each answering a different retailer need. Choose the group by the purchase you want to support and where your customers are buying.

Provider type	Main job	Providers to consider	When you need it
AI shopping channel	Help customers discover products across retailers	OpenAI, Google, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot	You want people researching in AI assistants to find your products
Protocol and payment backer	Carry checkout instructions, prove spending authority or process payment	Google, OpenAI, Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Adyen	You need an agent-led transaction to reach your payment system
Commerce platform	Connect catalogue, checkout and order operations to AI channels	Shopify, BigCommerce	You want to distribute products through your existing store platform
On-site shopping agent	Help customers choose and purchase within your store	shoppa	You want an AI shopping experience for visitors already on your site

A protocol is a shared technical agreement about how systems communicate. Adopting one doesn’t automatically put your products in an AI assistant or make a payment programme available locally. Channel access and merchant eligibility remain separate decisions.

For the basic mechanism behind these categories, read how agentic commerce works. The comparisons below focus on choosing a provider.

AI Shopping Channels

OpenAI, Google, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot are shopping channels where customers research across retailers. Their general AI assistants and their embedded purchasing features have different availability rules.

OpenAI and ChatGPT

OpenAI makes ChatGPT a product discovery channel, with conversational research and side-by-side comparisons. Its product discovery announcement says the original Instant Checkout lacked the flexibility it wanted. OpenAI now prioritises discovery while letting merchants use their own checkout experiences.

Australian customers can use ChatGPT for product research and follow links to your store. For an Australian retailer, product visibility is a more useful starting point than a standalone Instant Checkout integration. Shopify’s published channel rules allow eligible merchants selling to US buyers to reach ChatGPT, regardless of the merchant’s location. An Australian store’s eligibility for those sales doesn’t establish embedded checkout for Australian buyers.

Google

Google’s Australian announcement confirms AI Mode in Search is available in Australia in English, using shopping data alongside web results. Australian retailers can also use Merchant Center’s AI performance insights, according to Google’s holiday-shopping update.

Google co-developed the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) for transactions across AI shopping experiences. Its holiday-shopping update describes simplified UCP integration capabilities rolling out in the US, with Australia and Canada to follow. Use Google for Australian product discovery. Treat direct checkout as a separate channel feature, not a consequence of having a Merchant Center feed.

Perplexity

Perplexity combines conversational product research with shopping cards and PayPal-powered Instant Buy. Its shopping announcement specifies US users. PayPal’s shopping guidance also describes the purchasing flow for US users.

For an Australian retailer serving Australian customers, Perplexity’s US shopping programme isn’t a local checkout route. It becomes relevant if you sell to US customers through an eligible merchant connection. General search visibility and enrolment in Instant Buy are different jobs.

Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft Copilot helps shoppers compare products and follow purchase links. Microsoft’s shopping support describes a Buy action that takes customers to a retailer’s purchase page, with features dependent on market and device.

Shopify’s published Copilot channel rules cover eligible merchants selling to US buyers, regardless of store location. An Australian retailer selling into the US can therefore consider that route. Stripe’s Copilot announcement places embedded checkout in the US. Don’t build an Australian checkout plan around the general availability of Copilot.

Payment and Protocol Providers

The best provider for agentic payments is the one that supports your merchant country and the agent’s payment flow. A network’s involvement in a protocol doesn’t give every merchant immediate access to its agent programme.

Google’s Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) records verifiable authority for an agent to make a purchase. Its collaborators include Mastercard, PayPal and Adyen. AP2 helps payment participants establish what a customer authorised. Our AP2 guide explains that payment-authority layer in more detail.

The Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), developed by OpenAI and Stripe, connects agents and merchant commerce systems. It supports product discovery and checkout communication. Google and Shopify co-developed UCP to connect the wider shopping journey, including checkout and post-purchase activity. These protocols can work with payment providers. They aren’t card networks or merchant accounts themselves.

Provider	What it supplies	Australian merchant decision
Visa Intelligent Commerce	Payment capabilities for authorised agents, with network credentials and agent recognition	Visa’s developer product requires approved access. It isn’t an unrestricted merchant signup
Mastercard Agent Pay	Agent registration and tokenised payments visible to payment participants	Mastercard reports authenticated Australian transactions through named issuer and processing partners. Access runs through the participating payment stack
Stripe	Shared Payment Tokens and the Agentic Commerce Suite	Stripe’s retail Suite lists the US, Canada and selected European countries. Australia isn’t in its supported-country list
PayPal	Agent payment services and Store Sync for catalogue and order access	Store Sync accepts access requests from merchants selling physical goods to US customers in USD. It doesn’t support sales to Australian customers
Adyen Agentic	Product feeds, cart connections and agent payments	Adyen’s product page identifies US availability. It isn’t presented as an Australian merchant rollout

Stripe’s Shared Payment Tokens let an agent initiate a permitted payment without receiving the customer’s underlying credentials. Its network-token support includes Visa and Mastercard. That payment mechanism and the retail Suite’s regional eligibility are separate facts.

Mastercard’s Australian transactions include cinema tickets bought with a Commonwealth Bank debit card and accommodation bought with a Westpac credit card. They demonstrate an Australian payment flow through participating partners. They don’t establish an open enrolment programme for every Australian retailer.

For domestic sales, plan agent-payment integration through a participating payment processor or acquirer. Mastercard’s Australian examples use IPSI as the processor. PayPal publishes a request-access route for eligible US-bound sales, while Visa’s developer product requires approved access. Budget for the specific programme and channel your payment integration supports.

Commerce Platforms and Store Agents

Commerce platforms distribute your products to external agents, while on-site agents help customers already shopping with you. A mid-sized Australian retailer can start with an on-site agent, then add external channels through its existing platform.

Shopify’s Agentic Storefronts connects eligible products to AI channels and manages those channels in the Shopify admin. Orders flow back into the store’s operations. Its channel rules distinguish US buyers from merchant location, so an Australian Shopify store selling to US customers has a different opportunity from a domestic-only store.

BigCommerce’s agentic commerce products include Feedonomics catalogue enrichment and storefront tools for agent access. Its business-to-consumer storefront connection supports product discovery and cart creation from live catalogue data. Those building blocks suit a retailer connecting agents to an existing BigCommerce store. They don’t by themselves promise checkout in every external AI channel.

shoppa is an AI shopping agent you add to your own store with two lines of code. Customers find and compare your products, then add to their basket and pay in the chat. Order tracking and returns continue in that conversation, with human handover when a customer needs staff.

shoppa answers from your live catalogue and your policy documents, so its recommendations stay within what you sell. A request such as “show me those in navy” keeps the earlier shopping context and narrows the catalogue results. Your colours, agent name and voice stay on your site, keeping the shopping conversation with your brand.

That makes shoppa the strongest first choice when your immediate problem is customers struggling to choose or complete a purchase on your store. It works alongside your commerce platform without requiring a platform migration. Retailers pursuing US sales can add eligible platform channels in parallel. A domestic retailer can put the own-store experience first and use Google for Australian discovery.

Give each workstream a concrete owner. Your ecommerce team owns the on-site shopping experience. The platform team owns channel connections, and the payment team owns agent-payment acceptance. Use the store preparation guide for the implementation steps once those provider roles are decided.