Future of Commerce: The Convergence of Conversational and Agentic Commerce

Commerce is undergoing its most fundamental transformation since the advent of e-commerce. This isn't simply about adding AI features to existing systems. It's a complete restructuring of how products are discovered, purchased, and experienced.

The best thing a business can do right now is grab a clean sheet of paper and reimagine everything. If you were designing your business from scratch, how would you build it to harness generative AI, conversational commerce, and agentic systems?

The shift applies to retailers, sure. But it also applies to:

That is over. Why?

Because the interface to your business is moving from human-led navigation ("I found you in Google, browsed your site, filled in your contact form") to agent-led execution ("I told my assistant what I need and it shortlisted you, or it didn't").

Of course, GEO and SEO techniques are being debated about what does and doesn't work to be found in ChatGPT these days, but that is just one piece of the puzzle that matters. If you are not structured so an AI agent can understand and advocate for you, you will not be surfaced. If you cannot be actioned, you will not be contacted.

Let's make this theory stick with a few examples, specifically for B2B:

The legacy accounting firm example:

The manufacturing business example:

We are entering an era where buying and selling is becoming conversational, contextual, and integrated into our lives, all orchestrated by AI. This will apply to everyone. From tax advisory to logistics setups and recruitment pipelines.

And there are some critical questions to consider:

Through this long-form piece, we will explore what this convergence of key forces means, how fast it is happening, and what to watch out for.

Three major forces are colliding at once:

This convergence marks a decisive shift in how products are discovered, purchased, and experienced. The funnel that once stretched from awareness to loyalty is imploding into a fluid, continuous loop of conversation, recommendation, and transaction.

Before we dive into each force, we need to understand that these are not isolated trends. They're interconnected, accelerating each other, and together they're creating what we call the invisible marketplace, where commerce happens between AI systems, orchestrated on behalf of users, often without anyone ever "visiting" your business in the traditional sense.

Let's break down each force, then see how they converge.

For decades, commerce followed a predictable logic: awareness, consideration, conversion. Marketers optimised for each stage, pouring billions into content, retargeting, and click-through funnels. That architecture is crumbling, for both B2B and B2C:

They'll ask, chat, compare, and decide, often all within a few minutes, and with an Agent doing most of the work. The sales funnel is no longer a straight line.

And with the arrival of "buy it in ChatGPT", we've hit the decisive milestone. AI-driven discovery and conversational interfaces are flattening the funnel into a single step: intent → fulfilment. A shopper no longer wanders; they command. "Find me eco-friendly tiles under $50 per square metre". The agent responds instantly, filtering every variable (inventory, location, shipping window) without the user ever seeing a search page. You didn't browse. You didn't register. You didn't see a cart. You just said what you wanted, and the marketplace formed around you.

That's zero-click intent at the point of transaction. For customers, this is revelation. Everything at our fingertips, instant relevance, an assistant that knows us. For businesses, this is a shift they're not prepared for.

The value shift businesses need to realise.

Commerce is moving from attention capture to relationship sustainment. Brand relevance is shifting from pre-purchase (awareness and conversion) to post-purchase engagement. Brands will become valuable not through entertainment, but through utility delivered after the transaction.

Consider the delivery waiting period: anticipatory messaging ("Can't wait for you to get your product"), educational tips on how to use or maintain the product, proactive support guidance, creating a community around the product. The possibilities are endless. What's going to differentiate brands is how they focus on retention and loyalty to deliver value throughout the lifecycle of the product.

With 58% of consumers replacing traditional search engines with AI tools for product recommendations, the post-purchase experience must level up significantly. A simple order confirmation email and carrier tracking link isn't going to cut it anymore.

But how exactly is this zero-click commerce being delivered? That's where Force Two enters: the platforms that are orchestrating these conversations and building monopolistic control.

We need to be very clear about what's actually happening versus what's being hyped.

The Critical Distinction

Conversational ≠ Agentic Commerce. People keep blurring this and getting lost.

Most of what's in market right now: Stripe's ChatGPT checkout, Perplexity plus PayPal, Amazon "Buy for Me," Meta Business AI handling in-thread transactions. These are assisted experiences, not autonomous agents. They still require the human to confirm the final step.

This is conversational commerce. It's real, and accelerating, but it still requires a human-in-the-loop.

But even this "assisted" layer is already killing the old funnel.

What Is Conversational Commerce in detail?

Conversational commerce combines commerce plus conversation. It lets customers discover products, ask questions in real time, purchase directly within chat or voice apps, and track, return, or reorder without leaving the conversation. It's commerce that flows at the speed of conversation.

The opportunity is massive and under-tapped. Global spend via conversational commerce is predicted to reach $290 billion in 2025, up from $41 billion in 2021. Over a third of consumers already use AI-powered conversations to research products, while 28% rely on them for recommendations.

Friction-free experience is the whole point. Historically, discovery and checkout lived in different places. You saw the product in one channel, you had to "click out" to finish. That's dead. Checkout is moving to the point of discovery.

This is already touching every vertical:

The conversation is now the storefront, the sales floor, the helpdesk, and, increasingly, the checkout. Importantly, the next battleground is the frontdoor of the internet: the browser.

So, who's 'winning' the Browser War?

The new battle is not "which AI model wins". It's "who owns the surface where intent first shows up". That's where AI-browsers come in.

The line between "search engine" and "browser" is gone. The browser is now the assistant. The assistant is now the buyer. The buyer is no longer always human.

ChatGPT is positioned to become the next major commerce distribution platform. With 700 million users and the highest retention in the category, they have the engagement depth that makes platforms valuable. The early signals are visible: connectors to HubSpot, Box, GitHub. ChatGPT recently announced Instant Checkout with Etsy as launch partner and Shopify coming. Reports suggest they plan to "take a cut of ChatGPT driven sales", essentially becoming a marketplace...

The platforms are building the conversational layer. But to actually transact (to move from conversation to autonomous purchasing) requires new infrastructure. That's Force Three.

If conversational commerce compresses the funnel, agentic commerce deletes it. Agents don't browse; they execute. They compare specs, negotiate pricing, and trigger payments via new protocols like OpenAI plus Stripe's Agent Commerce Protocol and Google's A2P work. The promise is that you say what you need, and the system handles the rest, across multiple vendors, in one flow.

This future is already taking shape. A single interaction could trigger a multi-vendor transaction, orchestrated from start to finish by AI. One request, with multiple suppliers fulfilling the order, all through one coordinated delivery, with one payment and confirmation moment for the buyer.

That's the invisible marketplace again. You're not "on" it. You're "in" it if you're compatible, and "out" of it if you're not.

The Three-Phase Timeline

Important caveats: high-consideration purchases (cars, property, significant fashion) will still require physical interaction. This evolution applies primarily to routine or well-understood product and services categories. But that's the majority of commerce volume.

Meanwhile, discovery is fragmenting. Social media won't vanish (people still want entertainment and connection) but the 90% "buy this now" saturation we see on Instagram could ease back toward friend content, and Social becomes one of many inputs into the Agentic commerce sequence: AI agents watch what you engage with socially, infer taste and intent, and carry that forward into purchase recommendations. Your interest is harvested before you even articulate it as a purchase.

The shift moves from binary signals (cookies, pixels) to organic, contextual understanding. AI agents develop comprehensive knowledge through ongoing conversations. ChatGPT's 700 million-plus user base lets it build a unified, memory-rich profile that's more holistic than any one app's tracking ever was. It knows not just what you clicked, but why you cared.

The catch for businesses is that we don't have five years to get ready for this shift.

Agent-mediated commerce requires entirely new infrastructure. Three layers are common across all implementations:

The likes of Shopify's universal catalogue amplify this. Thousands of stores become searchable through a single interface. Users build carts combining products from multiple merchants worldwide.

And the last mile of the transaction (unified multi-vendor checkout, centralised fulfilment orchestration, one payment that correctly splits downstream) is exactly what OpenAI, Google, and Stripe are sprinting at.

That's game over for "traffic acquisition" as your main strategy. Traffic will diminish the way it used to (although those that do come to your website will have very high intent!). The assistant pulls you in or it doesn't.

When an AI system acts on behalf of a human or business, verification becomes the new backbone. You need to prove the link between human intent and payment, determine if a request is legitimate, log who is accountable, and create auditable trails.

This is where KYA comes in: Know Your Agent ( the evolution of KYC: Know Your Customer). You verify agent identity and authority. You confirm the agent is acting under legitimate instruction. You prevent agent impersonation. You preserve the accountability chain.

This will end up as mandatory compliance. There's no way enterprise finance signs off agentic spend without KYA-grade traceability.

It's also worth noticing who's building all the rails for this...

They are not just chatting. They are laying payments, trust, and identity foundations for the invisible marketplace.

We need to be honest: conversational commerce is in the early innings and scaling quickly. Agentic commerce is still in proof-of-concept.

The direction of travel is pretty clear (Frictionless discovery, personalisation at scale, automated purchasing), but the gaps to get there are immense.

This is where the three forces converge.

Commerce becomes a background service. You say what you need. The AI assistant orchestrates a multi-vendor transaction, end to end, in one flow. Let's recap this:

That's not hypothetical. That is already starting to ship.

The marketplace is no longer Amazon, Shopify, your DTC site, or your retail partner. The marketplace is the AI layer that sits on top of all of them and arbitrages them for the buyer, in real time, based on exact context.

Once the invisible marketplace goes mainstream, your "website experience" is background noise unless you are one of the few suppliers that the marketplace is willing to transact with. These new "invisible marketplaces" operate entirely between AI systems. Instead of navigating traditional search results or e-commerce websites, AI Agents communicate directly with product AI, aligning user needs with relevant offerings. Users may never see the traditional marketplace. AI streamlines the discovery, recommendation, and trial processes behind the scenes. By the time humans participate, many decisions may already have been made.

This is where the death of the funnel (Force One), the rise of conversational commerce platforms (Force Two), and the emergence of agentic infrastructure (Force Three) all come together into a single, seamless experience.

This is the invisible marketplace. It sits between the user and every brand. It is orchestrated by AI. It is contextual and it is instant.

These are the moves for mid-market Execs. Not Tier 1. Not FAANG. Normal businesses that don't have a 40-person internal AI team.

1. Build the Machine-Facing Source of Truth

You need one canonical, always-current source that states who you are, what you do, how you operate, how you deliver, how you support, who you serve, and on what terms. This is not a brochure. This is a spec sheet for agents. Brands are growth hacking this.

The point is to give assistants a single, trusted reference so they don't hallucinate you. AI will happily misrepresent you if you don't give it something better. If you don't deliberately shape how you're described, someone else (or something else) will.

Clean up your service data, including scope, compliance, delivery timelines, and terms. Expose it in structured, machine-readable form. Keep it updated. Make it unambiguous. If the agent can't parse you, you're out of the consideration set before a human even knows you existed.

2. Begin Restructuring Value and Focus Around Post-Transaction, Not Pre-Transaction

Brand relevance is moving from "can you get attention" to "do you deliver utility after the transaction". Anticipate needs. Send guidance. Help them get value from what they engaged you for. Give them a reason to come back without being asked.

Differentiation shifts after the transaction because pre-transaction is being standardised and intermediated by assistants in a zero-click flow. It's not optional to deliver a robust post-sale experience anymore. It's mandatory for the customer to even reconsider your business.

This applies whether you're selling products, services, or solutions. The delivery experience, the support experience, the ongoing relationship experience, that's your moat now.

3. Prepare to Transact with Agents, Not Just Customers

Agents are already behaving like buyers. They are comparing terms, friction points, SLA clarity, pricing stability, and delivery speed. They are doing it faster and more ruthlessly than any human buyer. That requires a whole new way of thinking and infrastructure building.

4. Build for Orchestration and Integration

The invisible marketplace model means your service will increasingly be bundled or coordinated alongside others in a single engagement. That's multi-vendor by default.

That implies: friction-free engagement (no forced RFP processes for standard work, no 8-step procurement for known scope), clear commercial terms (you still need to control margin and stay compliant), and integration (whether that's API access, data flows, or operational handoffs that work like any other engagement).

Speed and efficiency matter because machine customers expect real-time. If your systems can't respond to agent-sourced enquiries or your processes choke on requests that didn't come through traditional channels, you're telling the future "we're not compatible".

5. Move Now, Without Getting Stupid

The first wave of businesses that become easy for agents to understand, trust, and transact with will get locked in as defaults. Preferred vendors. Known quantities. They'll get surfaced more, selected more, and referenced more.

But if you sprint in with trash data, broken delivery, unclear terms, or fantasy SLAs, agents will absolutely punish you. Agents won't "be nice because you're a brand". They'll cut you.

Of course, it won't all be relevant immediately, nor will it all eventuate like the utopia Big Tech talk about. But AI is a technology that you don't want to bet against. And building the muscle of being curious, testing, experimenting, and learning is paramount for any Exec to ensure it stays competitive.

You can't opt out of this transformation. Your competitors won't. Your customers won't. Markets are ruthless about efficiency, and agent-mediated commerce is more efficient than manual discovery and purchasing.

The only choice is whether you navigate this transition with eyes open or closed. Whether you position strategically or react desperately. Whether you build for the future while extracting value from the present, or cling to current models until they collapse.

The next eighteen months will separate winners from casualties. The platforms are moving, the infrastructure is being built, and customer behaviour is shifting.

Understanding the pattern isn't enough. Action is required:

The future of commerce isn't coming. It's already here. Grab the clean sheet of paper. Redesign around this new reality.