Commerce is changing. What merchants expect? Podcast w/Shopify.

Agentic commerce represents a fundamental shift in the digital economy where AI agents, rather than humans, navigate the internet to execute transactions. Fabian Müssig, Head of Solution Engineering for EMEA at Shopify, highlights that traditional web infrastructure is designed to block bot traffic, creating "traps" for high-intent AI buyers. To bridge this gap, Shopify introduced the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open standard developed with Google that enables millisecond-level negotiation between agents and merchants regarding taxes, discounts, and loyalty status. Shopify is expanding its catalog infrastructure to allow any brand—not just existing merchants—to publish product data for discovery across AI channels like Gemini and ChatGPT. With AI-originated orders reportedly increasing 15-fold between early 2025 and 2026, businesses must prioritize structured product data and inventory accuracy to remain viable in an increasingly automated marketplace.