AI helps shoppers choose, but they still pay on your site: agentic commerce in 2026

In late September 2026, Adobe published its US holiday shopping forecast. As reported by Search Engine Watch, Adobe expects traffic from AI platforms to US retail sites to grow 130% year on year between 1 November and 31 December.

Figures from earlier in the year point the same way. AI traffic rose 235% from January to May and 127% in August. During June’s Prime Day event it rose 89%, and AI-referred visitors converted 40% better than other traffic. The forecast is based on Adobe Analytics data covering more than one trillion visits.

Read it carefully, though. The 130% figure is growth, not share. Adobe itself describes AI traffic as modest in volume compared with other major channels. Total US online holiday sales are forecast at $275.1 billion, up 6.7%.

OpenAI’s Instant Checkout let users buy inside ChatGPT without visiting the retailer’s site. In March 2026, Search Engine Land reported that OpenAI had confirmed it was phasing the feature out in favour of app-based checkout handled by merchants.

The clearest data came from Walmart, which offered about 200,000 products through Instant Checkout from November. Daniel Danker, Walmart’s EVP of product and design, said purchases made inside the chat converted at one-third the rate of those where users clicked through to Walmart’s website, and called the experience “unsatisfying”.

Walmart’s next step is to embed its own Sparky assistant inside ChatGPT, where users log into their Walmart account, sync carts and pay within Walmart’s own system. It planned a similar integration with Google Gemini.

Google, together with Shopify, launched the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) in January 2026. It is an open standard for commerce through AI agents, co-developed with Etsy, Wayfair, Target and Walmart and endorsed by more than 20 companies, including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Adyen and American Express.

The key point is that merchants remain the Merchant of Record and keep ownership of the customer relationship. Google planned to use UCP to let shoppers check out with US retailers from AI Mode and Gemini using Google Pay, so for now this is mainly a US story.

Taken together, the 2026 direction is that AI handles discovery, comparison and referral, while merchants want to keep control of checkout, customer data and the after-sale experience.

In our view, this takes pressure off Thai businesses that feel they must rush to sell inside AI chat right now. Evidence from the largest players suggests that closing the sale on the retailer’s own site still works better. The smarter investment is a website that AI can understand and that referred shoppers can buy from easily.

If AI is going to recommend your products, it needs complete and accurate information: price, stock, shipping cost, delivery time and return policy. Many Thai shops still put this information in images or ask customers to message for details, which makes decisions harder for both AI and shoppers.

The other side is the page AI visitors land on. These visitors have usually researched already and are ready to buy, which Adobe’s Prime Day conversion figure supports. A slow product page or a long checkout loses the highest-quality visitors.

Most of the work is the basics of a good e-commerce site, which pays off for shoppers arriving from Google, social media and AI alike.

None of this needs to wait for AI agents to become common in Thailand. It helps shoppers from every channel today, and if standards such as UCP open in the Thai market, shops with well-organised product data will be able to connect faster.

• Show price, stock, shipping and return policy as real text on product pages
• Submit a product feed to Google Merchant Center and keep it in sync with the site
• Shorten checkout, support PromptPay and cards, and allow guest checkout
• Track traffic from AI platforms separately in analytics to see real conversion
• Watch for UCP or similar standards opening in Thailand before investing in integrations