What: Agentic commerce is progressing in a different order than expected: shoppers already use generative AI to prepare purchases, but few trust it to pay, so brands must first secure their presence in AI recommendations.

Why it is important:The trust gap between recommendation and payment shifts investment priorities from payment integrations to data quality and AI visibility measurement, the same priorities Galeries Lafayette has already set.

OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Amazon have each advanced components of autonomous payment, and a Sopra Steria study projects €310 billion in AI-assisted e-commerce transactions within ten years. Yet Walmart suspended its Instant Checkout integration with ChatGPT after observing a conversion rate roughly three times lower than on its own site, even though the feed brought in twice as many new customers.

French data points the same way. According to VISIPLUS Academy, just over a quarter of the top 100 French e-commerce sites have deployed an AI assistant, and none offers fully automated checkout. 47% of shoppers trust AI before a purchase, but only 30% at payment, and 66% prefer human contact at that stage. The French Competition Authority puts AI-agent traffic at barely 5% of e-commerce today, with 20-25% projected by 2030.

A Fevad x KPMG study finds 31% of French online shoppers use generative AI to prepare a purchase, rising to 73% among regular users. Brands first need clean product feeds and structured data, price consistency between AI answers and checkout, consistent reviews, and knowledge of what AI engines say about them.

IADS Notes: The gap between AI-assisted discovery and AI-completed purchase was already visible earlier this year. After OpenAI disabled Instant Checkout, Journal du Net (March 2026) reported that most consumers remain reluctant to complete transactions inside AI platforms and prefer retailer-controlled environments, while Forbes (March 2026) pointed to the operational and trust hurdles the retreat exposed. Journal du Net (June 2026) drew the same line between trusting AI to recommend a product and trusting it to buy one, and tied visibility in AI-driven discovery to structured data and information quality. Earlier in the year, Ecommerce Mag (April 2026) showed Galeries Lafayette treating brand presence in AI-generated answers and product data quality as measurable priorities, and Journal du Net (June 2026) argued that retailers need AI visibility analysis alongside traditional reputation monitoring.

Agentic commerce: the real battle takes place before payment