JPMorgan Says AI Shopping Still Faces Major Trust Issues

One doesn’t have to look far these days to find reports about how agentic commerce is reshaping consumer behavior and the overall state of eCommerce.

But JPMorgan Chase, a leading financial institution, has largely been taking a wait-and-see stance, monitoring developments on the agentic commerce front rather than rushing to make moves.

With agentic commerce, AI agents can find different product options, compare their attributes, and purchase items on a shopper’s behalf. According to a recent report, 48% of consumers have expressed interest in allowing an AI agent to buy their groceries or plan their meals for them.

And big names in the payments industry, including Mastercard and Visa, have introduced initiatives around AI-driven commerce. Programs such as Mastercard’s Agent Pay can help users gain confidence in using AI agents for purchases by bringing more security to agentic transactions.

But JPMorgan Chase, which recently partnered with Mirakl on agentic commerce, hasn’t resigned itself to observation mode because it doesn’t believe in agentic potential. American Banker reported the financial institution has noted that a number of issues exist with agentic commerce that the technology industry needs to deal with.

JPMorgan has one of the largest portfolios of credit card loans among U.S. bank holding companies. Due to its size, the credit card issuer is likely to have a major influence on how quickly agentic commerce takes off in the country.

Richard Crone is the CEO of Crone Consulting, a firm that focuses on helping banks and other parties develop strategies for payments. Crone told American Banker that, for the banking industry, JPMorgan represents the most significant opportunity in agentic commerce.

The financial news publication spoke with Prashant Sharma, Executive Director of Biometrics and Identity Solutions at JPMorgan Chase, to learn more about the company’s approach to agentic commerce.

Sharma said the bank works closely with merchants and serves a vast number of consumers. That means JPMorgan needs to kick the tires on any new processes so the bank doesn’t displease its consumer and business customers.

“We wanted to make sure that we have a very clear idea in terms of how that impacts the merchants and consumers before we start putting our names on any of these announcements,” Sharma explained in response to a question about why JPMorgan Chase has stayed relatively quiet in regard to agentic commerce.

From a working parent struggling to get dinner on the table every night to a college student rushing from one class to the next, most people can benefit from life hacks that save them time and money. 

John Collison, President and Co-Founder of Stripe, thinks that agentic commerce will completely overhaul online shopping, according to a new PYMNTS report. Even consumers who enjoy the experience of browsing for items and comparing prices across vendors are likely to see some value in having an AI agent assist them in shopping.

“When you find the product at the very end, do you really then want to go and be filling out all these web form fields and things like that?” Collison recently asked in an interview, according to PYMNTS. “Or do you want to just say, ‘Yeah, that sounds good, buy it for me in this size?’”

Regardless of how much time consumers can save from engaging in AI-driven commerce, it may take a while before most people are comfortable with having AI agents make purchases on their behalf.

Sharma suggested to American Banker that the situation people may face when deciding whether to dive into agentic commerce is similar to what consumers encountered in the earlier days of the internet.

Visa has called attention to a recent increase in the number of dark web community posts that mention “AI agent”.

“Think about 25 years ago when eCommerce was coming up, everybody was very skeptical about putting their credit card number on the website,” Sharma said. 

“I don’t think anybody is saying that it’s going to take 25 years for agentic commerce to get to where we are with eCommerce, but that trust both from the consumer as well as [the] merchant perspective is paramount,” Sharma added.

One reason people may not trust agentic commerce at this point is that they fear bad actors could redirect AI agents to make unauthorized purchases. 

A report from Visa reveals that the number of dark web community posts that refer to “AI agent” grew significantly over a six-month period last year when compared to the prior six months.

In addition to consumers and merchants, credit card issuers must come to trust agentic commerce for it to gain more traction. Sharma told American Banker that if something goes wrong when an AI agent makes a purchase on a consumer’s behalf, that person will call their bank first.

“We also need to make sure that we, as a bank, feel comfortable that these transactions are secure and that agents are not hallucinating,” Sharma said. “That trust has to be there in the entire ecosystem.”