纵观历史，诸多突破性进展不仅改进了工具本身，更彻底重塑了人类的生活体验。在商业领域，类似的范式转移屡次改变人们的购物方式与企业运营模式：第一台收银机改变了簿记方式；条形码的推出彻底革新了全球物流；互联网的出现则打破了我们对实体店的依赖。如今，零售与支付行业再次站上了一个历史性的转折点——智能体电商（agentic commerce）。
智能体电商是一场根本性变革，它将重塑消费者发现、搜索与购买产品的方式。未来几年，消费者将广泛使用AI智能体来发现商品、比较选择、协商价格并完成购买，从而精准获得心仪商品，并以理想价格成交。
与用于预测的预测性AI、或用于内容创作的生成式AI不同，智能体AI（agentic AI）迈出了关键一步——它能代表个人或企业采取行动。它超越了传统电商，提供真正“助手式”的体验，无论通过消费者自有设备还是零售商网站，都如同为每位消费者配备了一位私人购物助理。我们预计，到明年将有大量消费者通过AI智能体管理购物全程，从产生意向直至收货。
对商家而言，智能体时代带来了两种新的客户互动模式。其一，商家可以全程掌控从商品发现到结算的消费者体验。这需要创建一个具备品牌特色的对话式智能体，使其能与消费者的AI智能体交互。例如，消费者可以指示其智能体：“我八月份要去加拿大落基山脉，不确定该穿什么。能否推荐几套符合我风格的穿搭？”商家的智能体便可与消费者的AI智能体通信，在获得授权后获取购物数据，从而根据消费者的风格和预算偏好提供更相关的推荐。
第二种模式是作为灵活的生态系统参与者运作，无论订单来自何处——消费者的智能体、其他商户的平台，还是社交应用等完全不同渠道——都优先确保销售达成。试想，消费者要求商户的智能体购买一件不在其目录中或缺货的商品。此时，智能体不会让交易落空，而是可以与其他零售商的智能体交互，寻找货源、完成交易并履行订单——从而打造以消费者需求为中心、无缝且无界的购物体验。
对支付服务提供商而言，智能体电商彻底改变了交易流程。它以个人AI智能体与商户AI智能体之间的直接自动化连接，取代了传统的标准结账流程。这些智能代理能处理从价格追踪到欺诈检测的一切事宜，使交易更快捷、本质上更安全。然而，在关键环节保留人工介入仍然重要，以确保由自主智能体代行发起的高价值重要交易，能够经由本人审核与确认。
为实现这些新的交互模式，互操作性至关重要。行业正积极推行如智能体支付协议（Agent Payments Protocol，简称AP2）等标准——这是一个开放的、与支付方式无关的框架，用于实现安全、可信且无缝的智能体主导交易。万事达（Mastercard）和PayPal等机构已成为其合作伙伴。借助AP2，消费者和商户都能解锁全新的互动方式。例如，用户可指示其AI智能体：“为某个周末预订往返机票和酒店，总预算1500美元。”智能体便能找到符合条件的组合，并同时安全地完成两项预订。
向智能体电商的转型正在发生。为把握机遇，企业管理者必须聚焦以下四个核心领域：
提供清晰的产品数据： AI智能体高度依赖上下文信息与精确数据。为确保产品能被这些多模态工具优先推荐，营销人员必须将产品信息视作战略资产。这意味着要确保产品信息可靠、条理清晰，以便智能体轻松理解、分类产品，并将其与消费者的具体需求相匹配。
奠定扎实的技术基础： 企业无法在沼泽上建造摩天大楼。因此，必须优先构建强大的数据平台，为这一架构性转变做好准备。AI智能体的能力取决于其运行所依赖的数据质量。构建洁净、互联的后端系统（涵盖数据、工具与协议），使AI助手能够无需人工干预即可交互并完成交易，至关重要。
保持人工监督： 如前所述，在AI驱动的关键决策中仍需保留人类判断。随着AI能力提升，这种“人在回路”（human-in-the-loop）的方法对于建立消费者信任和管理风险至关重要。
善用生态系统资源：由于我们仍处于早期阶段，智能体电商在普及道路上仍面临诸多未解难题。在启动智能体电商项目时，依赖身处一线、并已在此新时代中积累了成败经验的软件与咨询合作伙伴，至关重要。
毫无疑问，电商的未来必将由智能体主导。现在正是为这场行业变革奠定基础的时刻。随着AI日益精进，商业将远超交易本身，转向自主预测并管理我们的需求。如今果断采取行动的商业领袖，不仅能够跟上步伐，更将参与塑造未来。
本文作者马特・伦纳（Matt Renner）现任谷歌云（Google Cloud）全球营收总裁，负责带领谷歌云的全球市场推广部门，包括销售、咨询、合作生态系统和客户工程团队。该部门与谷歌的产品和工程团队紧密协作，助力各行各业、不同规模的企业借助人工智能实现云端转型。
此前，他曾担任谷歌云北美及全球初创企业业务总裁，兼谷歌云市场推广首席运营官。在加入谷歌云之前，他曾任微软（Microsoft）美国企业业务总裁，并曾在Salesforce和甲骨文公司（Oracle Corporation）担任多个高级管理职位。（*）
译者：朴成奎
纵观历史，诸多突破性进展不仅改进了工具本身，更彻底重塑了人类的生活体验。在商业领域，类似的范式转移屡次改变人们的购物方式与企业运营模式：第一台收银机改变了簿记方式；条形码的推出彻底革新了全球物流；互联网的出现则打破了我们对实体店的依赖。如今，零售与支付行业再次站上了一个历史性的转折点——智能体电商（agentic commerce）。
智能体电商是一场根本性变革，它将重塑消费者发现、搜索与购买产品的方式。未来几年，消费者将广泛使用AI智能体来发现商品、比较选择、协商价格并完成购买，从而精准获得心仪商品，并以理想价格成交。
与用于预测的预测性AI、或用于内容创作的生成式AI不同，智能体AI（agentic AI）迈出了关键一步——它能代表个人或企业采取行动。它超越了传统电商，提供真正“助手式”的体验，无论通过消费者自有设备还是零售商网站，都如同为每位消费者配备了一位私人购物助理。我们预计，到明年将有大量消费者通过AI智能体管理购物全程，从产生意向直至收货。
对商家而言，智能体时代带来了两种新的客户互动模式。其一，商家可以全程掌控从商品发现到结算的消费者体验。这需要创建一个具备品牌特色的对话式智能体，使其能与消费者的AI智能体交互。例如，消费者可以指示其智能体：“我八月份要去加拿大落基山脉，不确定该穿什么。能否推荐几套符合我风格的穿搭？”商家的智能体便可与消费者的AI智能体通信，在获得授权后获取购物数据，从而根据消费者的风格和预算偏好提供更相关的推荐。
第二种模式是作为灵活的生态系统参与者运作，无论订单来自何处——消费者的智能体、其他商户的平台，还是社交应用等完全不同渠道——都优先确保销售达成。试想，消费者要求商户的智能体购买一件不在其目录中或缺货的商品。此时，智能体不会让交易落空，而是可以与其他零售商的智能体交互，寻找货源、完成交易并履行订单——从而打造以消费者需求为中心、无缝且无界的购物体验。
对支付服务提供商而言，智能体电商彻底改变了交易流程。它以个人AI智能体与商户AI智能体之间的直接自动化连接，取代了传统的标准结账流程。这些智能代理能处理从价格追踪到欺诈检测的一切事宜，使交易更快捷、本质上更安全。然而，在关键环节保留人工介入仍然重要，以确保由自主智能体代行发起的高价值重要交易，能够经由本人审核与确认。
为实现这些新的交互模式，互操作性至关重要。行业正积极推行如智能体支付协议（Agent Payments Protocol，简称AP2）等标准——这是一个开放的、与支付方式无关的框架，用于实现安全、可信且无缝的智能体主导交易。万事达（Mastercard）和PayPal等机构已成为其合作伙伴。借助AP2，消费者和商户都能解锁全新的互动方式。例如，用户可指示其AI智能体：“为某个周末预订往返机票和酒店，总预算1500美元。”智能体便能找到符合条件的组合，并同时安全地完成两项预订。
向智能体电商的转型正在发生。为把握机遇，企业管理者必须聚焦以下四个核心领域：
提供清晰的产品数据： AI智能体高度依赖上下文信息与精确数据。为确保产品能被这些多模态工具优先推荐，营销人员必须将产品信息视作战略资产。这意味着要确保产品信息可靠、条理清晰，以便智能体轻松理解、分类产品，并将其与消费者的具体需求相匹配。
奠定扎实的技术基础： 企业无法在沼泽上建造摩天大楼。因此，必须优先构建强大的数据平台，为这一架构性转变做好准备。AI智能体的能力取决于其运行所依赖的数据质量。构建洁净、互联的后端系统（涵盖数据、工具与协议），使AI助手能够无需人工干预即可交互并完成交易，至关重要。
保持人工监督： 如前所述，在AI驱动的关键决策中仍需保留人类判断。随着AI能力提升，这种“人在回路”（human-in-the-loop）的方法对于建立消费者信任和管理风险至关重要。
善用生态系统资源：由于我们仍处于早期阶段，智能体电商在普及道路上仍面临诸多未解难题。在启动智能体电商项目时，依赖身处一线、并已在此新时代中积累了成败经验的软件与咨询合作伙伴，至关重要。
毫无疑问，电商的未来必将由智能体主导。现在正是为这场行业变革奠定基础的时刻。随着AI日益精进，商业将远超交易本身，转向自主预测并管理我们的需求。如今果断采取行动的商业领袖，不仅能够跟上步伐，更将参与塑造未来。
本文作者马特・伦纳（Matt Renner）现任谷歌云（Google Cloud）全球营收总裁，负责带领谷歌云的全球市场推广部门，包括销售、咨询、合作生态系统和客户工程团队。该部门与谷歌的产品和工程团队紧密协作，助力各行各业、不同规模的企业借助人工智能实现云端转型。
此前，他曾担任谷歌云北美及全球初创企业业务总裁，兼谷歌云市场推广首席运营官。在加入谷歌云之前，他曾任微软（Microsoft）美国企业业务总裁，并曾在Salesforce和甲骨文公司（Oracle Corporation）担任多个高级管理职位。（*）
译者：朴成奎
Throughout history, we've witnessed breakthroughs that didn't just improve things---they've also completely reshaped human experiences. In commerce, similar paradigm shifts have repeatedly altered how people shop and how businesses operate: the first cash register changed bookkeeping; the introduction of the barcode completely changed global logistics; and the arrival of the internet changed our reliance on physical stores. Today, the world of retail and payments stands on the verge of another such monumental moment: agentic commerce.
Agentic commerce is a fundamental shift that will reshape how consumers discover, search, and purchase products. In the coming years, shoppers will embrace AI agents that discover products, compare options, negotiate prices, and complete purchases to give them exactly what they want, at prices that work for them.
Unlike predictive AI (which helps us forecast), or generative AI (which helps us create), agentic AI takes the crucial step of taking action on a person or company's behalf. It goes beyond traditional e-commerce to a truly assistive experience --- whether on a consumer's own device or through a retailer's site --- that feels like a personal shopper for every consumer. By next year, we anticipate a significant rise in consumers interacting with AI agents to manage their shopping, from initial intent to final receipt.
For merchants, the agentic era introduces two new interaction models for connecting with customers. First, merchants can own the consumer experience from product discovery to checkout. This model requires creating a branded, conversational agent that can interact with a shopper's AI agent. For example, a consumer could instruct their agent: "I'm going to the Canadian Rockies in August and am not sure what to wear. Can you recommend a couple of outfits in my style?" The merchant's agent could communicate with the shopper's AI agent to access permissioned shopping data to provide more relevant recommendations based on the consumer's style and budget preferences.
The second model involves operating as a fluid ecosystem player, prioritizing the sale no matter where it originates --- from a consumer's agent, another merchant's platform, or from something different altogether, like a social app. Imagine a consumer asks the merchant's agent to purchase a product that is not in its catalog or is currently out of stock. Instead of losing the sale, the agent could interact with other retailers' agents to source the item, complete the transaction, and fulfill the order --- creating a frictionless and endless shopping experience that puts the shopper's needs first.
For payments providers, agentic commerce is a fundamental shift in the transaction process. It replaces the standard checkout experience with a direct, automated connection between personal AI agents and merchant AI agents. These smart agents can handle everything from price tracking to fraud detection, making transactions faster and inherently more secure. However, having a human in the loop will be important to ensure that critical, high-value transactions initiated by autonomous agents on behalf of a person are reviewed and verified by that person.
To enable these new interaction models, interoperability is crucial, and the industry is championing protocols like the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), an open, payment-agnostic framework for secure, trusted, and seamless agent-led transactions that already has partners like Mastercard and PayPal on board. With AP2, both consumers and merchants can unlock new ways of interacting with each other. For example, a user could instruct their AI agent to book a round-trip flight and a hotel for a specific weekend with a total budget of $1,500, and then the agent can find a combination that fits and securely book both simultaneously.
The shift to agentic commerce is happening now. To take advantage, I believe there are four core areas where executives must focus:
1. Provide clear product data: AI agents rely on context and precision. To ensure your products are highly recommended by these multimodal tools, marketers must treat product information as a strategic asset. This means ensuring product information is reliable and well-organized so agents easily understand, categorize and match your product to specific consumer intent.
2.Establish solid tech foundations: You can't build a skyscraper on a swamp. That's why businesses must prioritize a strong data platform to prepare for this architectural shift. AI agents are only as good as the data they run on. Building clean, connected back-end systems (data, tools, and protocols) that allow AI assistants to interact and complete transactions without manual intervention is critical.
2. Maintain human oversight: As mentioned before, keep human judgment involved in critical AI-driven decisions. This "human-in-the-loop" approach is essential for building consumer trust and managing risks as AI capabilities grow.
3. Leverage the ecosystem: Because we are still in the early stages, there are many unsolved problems in the way of agentic commerce gaining traction. When creating an agentic commerce initiative, it's critical to lean on software and consulting partners who are on the front lines and have learned what works and what doesn't in this new era.
4. There's no doubt the future of commerce will be agentic. The time to build the foundation for this industry shift is now. As AI becomes more sophisticated, commerce will move far beyond transactions to anticipating and managing our needs autonomously. Business leaders who act decisively today won't just keep pace; they will help engineer the future.
Matt Renner is president, global revenue, Google Cloud, where he leads the global go-to-market organization, including teams across sales, consulting, partner ecosystem, and customer engineering. In lockstep with Google product and engineering teams, this organization helps businesses of all sizes across industries and geographies transform in the cloud, powered by artificial intelligence.
He previously served as President of North America and Global Startups, and Chief Operating Officer for Google Cloud go-to-market. Before joining Google Cloud, he was President of the U.S. Enterprise business at Microsoft. He also held a number of senior leadership roles at Salesforce and Oracle Corporation.