According to TechRepublic, new UK research from payments consultancy PSE Consulting reveals that AI-powered shopping is set for a major breakthrough this Black Friday on November 28. The study shows nearly half of UK adults (49%) now regularly use AI tools for shopping, with almost a quarter (22%) specifically planning to rely on them for Black Friday and Christmas purchases. Younger consumers are driving this shift dramatically – 42% of 18-34-year-olds intend to deploy AI for festive shopping. Even more striking, 85% of those planning to use AI shopping tools say they would trust them to place orders and execute payments automatically. The research comes just months after OpenAI announced its Agentic Commerce Protocol in partnership with Stripe, though full European rollout faces another six to nine months of delays due to Strong Customer Authentication requirements.
The agentic commerce revolution
Here’s the thing – we’re not just talking about better product recommendations anymore. This is about full transactional autonomy where AI agents can search, compare, and actually complete purchases without human intervention. Chris Jones from PSE Consulting puts it bluntly: “Systems designed for human-paced transactions are now under pressure to support high-frequency, autonomous agent-initiated flows.” Basically, our entire payment infrastructure was built for people clicking buttons, not algorithms making thousands of micro-decisions per second.
And the scale potential is staggering. The research suggests that by 2030, AI agents could steer $1 trillion in online spending annually in the US alone, with global estimates reaching several trillion. That’s not just incremental growth – that’s fundamentally rewriting how commerce works. We’re moving from a world where consumers initiate purchases to one where AI acts continuously in the background, monitoring prices and snapping up deals in real-time.
But trust barriers remain massive
Now for the reality check. Despite all this enthusiasm, UK consumers have serious reservations. Nearly half (49%) are worried about privacy and how their data gets used, while 46% fear fraud risk from unauthorized purchases. Another 41% are concerned AI might simply select the wrong items. Only 9% of respondents have no concerns at all.
So we’ve got this weird disconnect happening. People are apparently willing to let AI spend their money, but they don’t really trust it to do so correctly. That feels like a recipe for disaster, doesn’t it? Returns processes, incorrect orders, opaque checkout flows – these are the practical nightmares waiting to happen. And let’s be honest, when was the last time you had a seamless returns experience even with human-initiated purchases?
The emerging AI confidence divide
The research identifies what PSE Consulting calls an “AI shopping confidence divide” that’s basically splitting consumers into two camps. On one side, you’ve got the early adopters – younger, digitally fluent, higher income folks who use AI tools daily. They’re nearly twice as likely as the general population to rely on AI for holiday shopping.
On the other side? Traditional consumers, typically 55 and over, where more than half never use AI tools and 80% won’t touch them for Black Friday. Retailers are going to face this awkward balancing act of catering to both groups simultaneously – supporting lightning-fast AI-driven purchasing while still providing traditional browsing for the skeptics.
The timing here is particularly interesting given the PSE Consulting research lands just as we’re seeing massive infrastructure investments in agentic commerce. But I can’t help wondering – are we solving the right problems? The focus seems to be on enabling the transactions, but what about the customer experience when things go wrong? Who’s liable when your AI shopping agent buys the wrong size, or worse, gets hacked? These aren’t theoretical questions anymore – they’re about to become very real retail headaches.
