American Express has released the Amex Business Playbook for Agentic Commerce, a free guide aimed at helping businesses prepare for a shift where AI agents increasingly search, evaluate, and buy on behalf of customers. The launch, announced October 6, comes with fresh survey data showing merchants expect agent-driven shopping to materially affect their business within a year.
Highlights#
- The playbook is built around the questions merchants are actually asking: whether AI will find and recommend their business, how to prepare for AI-assisted purchases, and how to preserve trust when an agent, not a person, makes the buying decision. Its first five chapters cover agentic commerce basics, being discovered by AI, making AI-driven transactions work, supporting trustworthy agent transactions, and standing out when AI narrows consumer choices.
- New Amex Trendex research shows a readiness gap. While 83% of surveyed U.S. businesses see agentic commerce as an opportunity, only 41% are actively experimenting or implementing, and 86% expect to need at least moderate support from payment providers. Sixty-two percent of merchants expect AI agents shopping for customers to have a moderate or significant impact within the next year.
- Consumer data tells a similar split story. Two-thirds of surveyed U.S. consumers say they are likely to use AI agents to research prices, but comfort with actual purchases drops sharply with ticket size: 52% would let an agent buy low-cost household items, while only 15% would trust one with high-value purchases like electronics.
- The playbook follows Amex's earlier Agentic Commerce Experiences (ACE) Developer Kit and Amex Agent Purchase Protection, which intends to shield eligible Card Members and merchants from charges caused by errors of registered AI agents. Amex is also launching a pilot Merchant AI Advisory Council and backing industry standards work for cross-platform agent commerce.
Why it matters#
Card networks are now formalizing the trust layer around agent-initiated payments, pairing merchant guidance with purchase protection for agent errors. That is the same problem escrow, reputation, and verifiable settlement rails solve in the agent-to-agent economy.