The Rise of Agentic Commerce: What Retail and CPG Leaders Need to Know

Artificial intelligence is changing how commerce works by influencing how products are discovered, how purchase decisions are made, how payments are completed, and how businesses build customer trust. As AI agents begin taking a more active role in buying journeys, a new question becoming increasingly important is ‘How can CPG and retail organizations prepare for the rise of agentic commerce?’

In the latest edition of Opus Wire, Advisory Board Member Subra Goparaju is in conversation with CMO Nischala Murthy on why how AI is reshaping payments and why agentic commerce is quickly becoming a strategic priority.

The conversation moves beyond emerging technologies to examine the foundations that will determine whether agentic commerce succeeds at scale. While payment networks and technology providers are building the infrastructure, lasting value will depend on trusted data, intelligent orchestration, strong governance, and reliable execution across the enterprise.

This transition is already underway. Leading technology platforms and payment networks are introducing the standards and frameworks needed to support AI-driven transactions. As these capabilities mature, CPG and retail leaders have an opportunity to move beyond isolated AI pilots and prepare their organizations for a future where AI agents become active participants in commerce.

Subra shares practical insights on where AI is already delivering value, what is holding back wider adoption of agentic commerce, and the steps organizations should take today to build trust and scale AI with confidence.

Question: Where is AI already creating real value in CPG and retail payments?

Subra: AI is moving payments from a back-end function to an invisible layer of commerce, with three shifts becoming visible:

1. The arrival of agentic commerce, where AI makes the experience more contextual by bringing in data such as loyalty information and customer preferences at the point of sale, helping drive better decisions.
2. AI is being deployed for adaptive fraud detection as retailers begin opting for models that interpret device behavior and use IP signals, etc., more intelligently. This means legacy rules-based engines will be replaced.
3. AI is proving useful in functions such as receivables and collections, automatically triggering follow-up emails, voice calls, and workflow triggers in a bid to lower collection costs and improve recovery rates.

Payments are no longer the closing step of a transaction. Instead, they now form a core part of the system that drives trust, outcomes, and customer experience.

Question. How real is agentic commerce today, and what is stopping CPG and retail companies from scaling it?

Subra: Agentic commerce is real. The technical scaffolding for it is being put in place. Examples: Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) presents an open standard for AI-driven commerce; Visa and Mastercard have launched frameworks designed to support secure agent-led payments. The challenge is in the adoption.

Enterprises still lack confidence that the agent can act within clear permissions. In other words, the pipes are being built, but the market is still deciding how much autonomy to grant. In my opinion, the time is ripe for CPG and retail companies to move beyond experimentation.

Question. What must improve before consumers and enterprises fully trust agentic commerce?

Subra: Trust in AI needs to improve. AI implementations will scale when data and end-to-end AI-driven execution become far more reliable. Today, the question leaders are asking is, “Can the digital ecosystem support agentic decision-making end-to-end?” To do so, product data must be structured so that AI agents can interpret it correctly and act on it with confidence. That requires stronger semantic layers around products and business context, and not just better prompts. The industry is beginning to recognize this, and you can see it reflected in Google’s UCP, which aims to create a common language among merchants, platforms, and agents. Payment initiatives such as Mastercard Agent Pay and other such agent-payment protocols are trying to define how secure delegation and consent should work. But until data quality, semantic consistency, and execution reliability improve, trust will remain conditional rather than automatic.

Question. What concerns are CPG and retail leaders raising most often about agentic AI?

Subra: Most leaders know the opportunity presented by agentic AI. They are struggling to govern it. Many executives want to move from prompt-based experimentation to a more autonomous, end-to-end enterprise implementation of AI.

However, once AI spans planning systems, ERP environments, e-commerce layers, and customer-facing workflows, the central question becomes orchestration: how do multiple agents interact across the enterprise without introducing new risks? That is why governance, trust, and data keep surfacing together in leadership conversations. The concern is not technical feasibility; it is whether the enterprise has the controls, permissions, and accountability structures to scale autonomy responsibly. That concern is well-founded, especially as companies increasingly rely on AI to improve productivity and decision-making velocity.

Subra Goparaju is an Advisory Board Member at Opus Technologies. Over a career spanning more than 30 years, he has led large-scale enterprise transformations across major consumer-facing organizations, with experience in enterprise architecture, cybersecurity, data, and digital modernization. He has helped global enterprises manage complex business and technology shifts. The blend of operational depth and strategic perspective he brings is invaluable to CPG and retail companies seeking to move beyond fragmented AI pilots. His views are especially relevant as payment networks build the foundations for agentic commerce and more intelligent, low-friction customer journeys.