Expert insight: “Agentic Commerce will shape the future of retail!”

Rebecca Doucet, Director of the Retail and Customers Global Business Line and member of the Executive Committee, spoke at the Retail Summit held last June by BNP Paribas Personal Finance on the theme “Embedding Finance, Empowering Commerce”.

Key takeaways

• Agentic commerce enables AI agents to search for and compare offers, then carry out certain actions within the boundaries set by the user.

• For brands, the challenge is to make their offers accessible, understandable and sufficiently documented to be considered in these new customer journeys.

• For BNP Paribas Personal Finance, this creates opportunities to integrate payments and financing into these journeys, while maintaining human support for complex situations.

At a time when AI is disrupting our traditional consumption models and retail is undergoing deep transformation, this event was an opportunity to exchange with partners, distributors, and technology leaders on an increasingly strategic question: How to unlock Agentic Commerce and improve the customer experience?

Rebecca’s speech on the growing integration between trade and financing, which has become a major growth driver, highlighted :

• the new challenges of this transformation,

• the new issues for the various players

• the key role of financing,  which is not just “an added value” but a structuring element of the customer experience and retailers’ performance.

Here is the essential.

For several years, companies have learned to optimize their visibility on traditional search engines, such as Google, and then, took a step foward on social media (Instagram, Pinterest…). Soon, a new shift will taking place: consumers will delegate their searches to “intelligent agents”, that will be allowed to purchase goods or services on their behalf.

Welcome to the era of Agentic Commerce!

Unlike today’s generative AI, whose role is primarily to produce content or answer questions, AI agents will be designed to pursue an objective: analyze a situation, develop a plan, make decisions, and execute actions autonomously within the framework set by the user.

Tomorrow, booking a trip, comparing insurance policies, choosing financing or buying a computer will no longer require a series of searches, comparisons and forms.

A personal agent will be able to achieve these tasks within seconds, taking into account the user’s preferences, budget, constraints, and habits.

This evolution is far from anecdotal. It redefines in depth how companies will be identified, compared… and ultimately selected.

From keyword marketing to “AI keyword marketing”

For twenty years, brands have sought to be visible to internet users.Tomorrow, they will need to be visible to artificial intelligences.

The nuance is fundamental. When a consumer performs a search on Google, several results are offered to them. He compares the proposals and makes the final choice.

With an AI agent, the process changes completely. The agent selects the offers according to the criteria defined by its user. If a brand is not identified as reliable, relevant or sufficiently documented, it may simply disappear from the recommendation.

The challenge is therefore no longer just about optimizing its SEO. It becomes necessary to optimize its ability to be understood, interpreted, and recommended by artificial intelligence models.

This is precisely what explains the emergence of GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), which could quickly become a pillar of digital visibility strategies.

A comparable transformation to the arrival of e-commerce

Every digital revolution changes the entry point between the customer and the company.

• The web has removed geographical boundaries.

• The mobile has made purchasing permanent.

• Generative AI has simplified access to information.

• The Digital Agentic Trade goes further: it facilitates decision-making.

For the consumer, this means less time spent comparing products.

For businesses, this means the competition will no longer be solely about the quality of the product or service, but also about their ability to effectively engage with agents.

The first experiments already show this evolution. Some banks now offer access to their services directly within conversational assistants, while major payment players are working on protocols enabling AI agents to perform secure transactions on behalf of their users.

Visibility, differentiation, disintermediation: the new risks for brands

This transformation raises several strategic challenges.

The first is that of visibility. If users are increasingly bypassing websites to go directly through an AI assistant, brands lose some control over their customer journey.

The second relates to differentiation. AI agents compare offers in real time. If products become indistinguishable, competition may shift towards price or a few measurable criteria.

Finally, a third challenge emerges: disintermediation. When the agent becomes the main point of contact where the client, companies gradually lose their direct relationship with them. They must then learn to convince not only their clients… but also the artificial intelligences that represent them.

As a result, major brands and large retailers will issue loss leader products for LLMs and attract customers to their spaces, where they will have their own agent.

The Agentic Commerce: a great opportunity for players who act quickly

As with all technological disruptions, Agentic Commerce is reshaping the playing field.

The first players able to expose their data, offers and services in formats usable by AI agents will have a significant competitive advantage.

They will benefit from increased visibility, even where acquisition costs remain relatively low. They will also be able to offer much smoother experiences, where artificial intelligence accompanies the user from research to transaction.

For financial services companies, this evolution also paves the way for new distribution models, improved personalization of recommendations, and new partnerships with conversational platforms.

What this means for BNP Paribas Personal Finance

For a player like BNP Paribas Personal Finance, Agentic Commerce is not just a technological evolution: it calls into question the way our financing offers will be displayed, compared and subscribed to.

To date, the acquisition journeys were largely controlled by search engines, merchant sites and distributor partners. Tomorrow, clients, retailers and platforms will have agents capable of searching for products, comparing offers and initiating purchase or financing journeys.

BNP Paribas Personal Finance will therefore need to be part of these new “agent-to-agent” dialogues so that its payment and financing solutions are visible, offered at the right time and integrated directly into the responses.

This evolution is giving rise to several strategic challenges

1/A loss of business opportunities. If AI agents become the main prescribers, BNP Paribas Personal Finance will need to ensure that its offers, content and expertise are correctly interpreted and recommended. A low presence in AI responses could gradually lead to a loss of traffic and business opportunities.

2/Increased competitive pressure. Agents will instantly compare several financing solutions based on objective criteria: rates, term, monthly payments, eligibility conditions or speed of response. Without rich, reliable and easily exploitable information by AIs, offers risk being perceived as interchangeable, increasing competitive pressure.

3/Finally, the mitigation of benefits related to certain exclusive partnerships. This transformation questions the historical partnership model. If an agent is able to compare offers from several institutions in real time, including within the same merchant journey, the advantages linked to certain exclusive partnerships could gradually diminish. 

The relationship between distributors, financial partners, and consumers will need to be rethought in an environment where AI becomes a new trusted intermediary.

These developments are still emerging and the protocols are not yet finalized. But the topic is accelerating rapidly. Exchanges with various players show that many partners are not yet ready, while major technology and payment players are advancing quickly, particularly in the United States, with solutions integrated into LLMs, wallets, or agentic payment protocols.

For BNP Paribas Personal Finance, the challenge is no longer just about optimizing the customer experience on its own channels: it’s about anticipating future standards and being present in the new conversational journeys driven by AI.

A unique opportunity for BNP Paribas Personal Finance to gain a competitive edge

This transformation also opens up good opportunities for BNP Paribas Personal Finance.

The first is to become one of the key players in financing within conversational ecosystems. Today, the presence of financial institutions in the responses of major language models remains relatively limited. This limited maturity leaves a window of opportunity to contribute to the definition of standards and position ourselves ahead of the curve in a structuring market.

The second opportunity lies in the opening of services.

By leveraging new agent exchange protocols and open architectures, BNP Paribas Personal Finance will be able to directly expose its simulation, financing, or payment capabilities to AI assistants of individuals or search engines.

The offers will no longer depend solely on traditional interfaces or partner platforms; they can be requested directly by agents acting on behalf of consumers.

The Agentic Commerce  represents an opportunity to enhance the value proposition to merchant partners. Many retailers are already questioning the impact of AI agents on their sales journeys.

The main opportunity for BNP Paribas Personal Finance is to have a customer base of 25 million customers. Tomorrow, by being pre-approved and validated by PF, the agent of a PF customer will be able to access a sum of money either directly or through a partner to complete their purchase. We are the largest customer credit base for agents in Europe.

BNP Paribas Personal Finance will support its Retailer partners in the transition towards Agentic Commerce. Their products and services display will need to be redesigned to align with Agentic Commerce and meet AI integration standards. The journeys will work together to integrate financing solutions into the responses generated by their agents.

Finally, AI agent interactions are particularly rich in context. They particularly help to better understand a customer’s real intention, their project, financing constraints and preferences. Exploited within a framework of trust and regulatory compliance, this information paves the way for more relevant recommendations, smoother financing journeys, and a deeply personalized customer experience.

PF will therefore need to make its offers accessible, understandable and correctly referenced by agents, based on reliable, structured and up-to-date data.

This positioning could be a differentiator if BNP Paribas Personal Finance succeeds in establishing itself as an expert player and driving force behind innovation. The C-level barometer confirms that partners expect more shared insights on these topics. We have internal expertise and the support of the BNP Paribas Group to pre-empt a pioneering position, including with an “Agentic Commerce” stream included in the strategic plan.

An evolution that refocuses the teams’ missions towards added value

This evolution will not eliminate the role of humans; it will shift it towards moments of higher added value. Agents will be able to handle simple and recurring requests, while human teams will remain essential to support complex situations, structure journeys, and build trust. In a more automated environment, the ability to provide advice and reassurance will remain a key differentiating factor.

The challenge is therefore not just about adopting new technology. It is about evolving the role of BNP Paribas Personal Finance in the digital commerce value chain: moving from a provider of financing solutions to a fully integrated player in the AI ecosystems that will guide tomorrow’s purchasing decisions.

Further reading

• Artificial intelligence at BNP Paribas Personal Finance: applications, changes to working practices and governance.

• Retail financing solutions: support for retailers and their customers’ purchase journeys.

• Understanding European consumers and their spending choices: the 2025 Observatoire Cetelem study (in French).