Agentic Payments in B2C Commerce: Where We Are Now

Forrester's Lily Varon delivers the most comprehensive timeline of agentic commerce developments to date, covering January through March 2026. The analysis confirms three structural shifts the AXD Institute has been tracking: consumer adoption remains low and stagnant despite massive investment, the protocol battle has consolidated around UCP (Google, 750M MAU) and ACP (OpenAI, 900M WAU) with Alibaba's Alipay emerging as the third force (300M MAU via Qwen App), and merchant payment providers are repositioning as 'connectors' across multiple protocols. The most significant data point is Walmart's revelation that ChatGPT Instant Checkout produced 'three times lower conversion rates' than click-out, leading to its pivot to the Sparky agent strategy. Forrester's observation that there is 'no indication Apple will adopt UCP' as of April 2026 is the most consequential absence in the protocol landscape - the world's largest mobile payments platform remains uncommitted.

What is the current state of agentic payments in B2C commerce?

Forrester Principal Analyst Lily Varon published the most comprehensive assessment of agentic payments in B2C commerce on 9 April 2026, covering developments from January through March 2026. The analysis provides the timeline and context that individual announcements lack - connecting the dots between protocol launches, merchant pilots, and consumer adoption data.

The central finding is sobering for agentic commerce advocates: consumer adoption remains low and relatively stagnant despite massive investment. The gap between infrastructure readiness and consumer willingness to delegate purchasing authority to AI agents confirms the consumer trust ceiling that the AXD Institute has been theorising. The infrastructure is being built, but the humans are not yet ready to use it.

Forrester's analysis covers the full protocol landscape, merchant adoption patterns, and payment provider positioning. It represents the most authoritative single source for understanding where agentic commerce stands as of early April 2026.

How has the protocol battle consolidated?

Forrester identifies three poles in the protocol competition. Google's Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) has the advantage of Gemini's 750 million monthly active users and the backing of major retailers including Gap, which partnered with Google for Gemini shopping on 24 March 2026. OpenAI's Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) leverages ChatGPT's 900 million weekly active users and Stripe's payment infrastructure.

The third force is Alibaba's Alipay, which reached 120 million agentic commerce transactions in February 2026 and launched the Agentic Commerce Trust Protocol in January 2026. With 300 million monthly active users via the Qwen App, Alibaba represents the most advanced deployment of agentic commerce at scale - though primarily in the Chinese market.

Forrester notes that OpenAI shuttered its Instant Checkout feature and pivoted to ChatGPT Apps as the commerce strategy. This pivot, combined with Walmart's conversion rate data, suggests that the 'buy inside the chat' model has failed its first major test. The industry is moving toward agent-mediated discovery with click-out to merchant sites for completion.

What does Walmart's conversion data reveal about agentic commerce?

The most significant data point in Forrester's analysis is Walmart's revelation that ChatGPT Instant Checkout produced 'three times lower conversion rates' than click-out. This is the first hard performance data from a major retailer on agentic commerce conversion, and it challenges the assumption that completing transactions inside the AI platform is superior to redirecting to the merchant site.

Walmart's response was to pivot from Instant Checkout to the Sparky agent strategy, embedding its AI shopping agent across both ChatGPT and Gemini platforms. This approach preserves the AI-mediated discovery experience while routing the transaction to Walmart's own checkout infrastructure where conversion rates are higher.

For the AXD discipline, this data validates the consumer trust ceiling framework. Consumers are willing to let AI agents discover and recommend products, but they are not yet willing to complete high-value transactions inside an AI platform. The trust boundary sits between discovery and transaction - precisely where the delegation design framework operates.

Why is Apple's absence from UCP significant?

Forrester's observation that there is 'no indication Apple will adopt UCP' as of April 2026 is the most consequential absence in the protocol landscape. Apple Pay processes a significant share of mobile commerce transactions, and Apple's Siri and Apple Intelligence represent a potential agent platform with over a billion active devices.

Apple's absence creates a structural gap in the protocol landscape. If Apple develops its own agentic commerce approach - whether a proprietary protocol or a modified version of an existing standard - it could fragment the market further. If Apple remains absent, it risks ceding the agentic commerce opportunity to Google and OpenAI.

For merchants, Apple's uncommitted position adds uncertainty to protocol strategy. A merchant that fully commits to UCP may find that Apple's eventual approach requires separate integration. This uncertainty reinforces the value of protocol-agnostic solutions like Visa's Intelligent Commerce Connect.

How are payment providers repositioning for agentic commerce?

Forrester identifies a structural shift in the payment provider landscape: merchant payment providers are repositioning as 'connectors' across multiple protocols rather than betting on a single standard. This connector strategy reflects the recognition that the protocol competition has not produced a clear winner and may not do so.

The connector approach aligns with the AXD Protocol Lab's analysis of the protocol landscape. Rather than a single protocol winning, the emerging architecture features multiple protocols coexisting with orchestration layers - like Visa's Intelligent Commerce Connect - providing the abstraction that merchants need.

For organisations assessing their agentic commerce readiness, Forrester's analysis reinforces the importance of protocol flexibility. The AXD Assessment's Protocol Readiness pillar evaluates whether an organisation can adapt to multiple protocols - a capability that Forrester's analysis confirms is essential in the current landscape.