“Retail is on the cusp of the most profound shift we’ve seen since the rise of e-commerce,” my colleague Rachel Moore, who leads our Incubation and AI teams, declared in a Women in Retail Leadership Circle opinion piece earlier this year. It’s only been four months, but that shift to agentic commerce is accelerating. My recent conversations with partners in the furniture retail space have included deeper discussions on artificial intelligence, including how brands need to engage with shoppers as they increasingly expect AI to do the “homework” for them.

Many retailers have already deployed or explored AI in support of product discovery and personalized recommendations, and they’re eager to take the next step. Agentic commerce could potentially transform their businesses by increasing sales, enhancing customer experience, and boosting employee productivity. However, retailers and their partners need to take proactive steps to make it happen.

AI agents are autonomous software assistants that can understand goals, make decisions, and take multistep actions on behalf of a person or business.

Here’s how we see AI working in commerce: A shopper’s agent will do the early work of discovery and comparison, weighing preferences, budget and tradeoffs like price, fit and speed of delivery. It will ask a few clarifying questions to pull forward the details that matter, such as product dimensions, materials, delivery timing and return terms. This is especially powerful in furniture and home where “fit” isn’t just a shopper’s opinion, but rather an essential consideration involving space, style and delivery constraints that matter as much as price. This is an important dynamic across any industry in which customers are balancing tradeoffs.

In an ideal world, these agentic commerce experiences will work great for consumers and brands. But what if the AI agent is working with incomplete information? And what if your brand isn’t showing up at all, or if it is, not being clearly represented? If agents can’t “read” your value, they’ll route shoppers elsewhere.

Synchrony is working with brands across industries on these challenges. For example, we’ve partnered with Ashley Furniture to build a road map and agent-ready workflows that help connect product information and checkout flows to AI agents. The point isn’t the platform. It’s making your catalog, policies and purchase flows discoverable and actionable by agents.

Synchrony is also building and testing new capabilities and helping partners enter a world where decision-making migrates from consumers to agents acting on their behalf.

How to Get Started

Preparing for agentic commerce isn’t a one-time initiative or a quick add-on. It’s a shift in how shopping happens: AI agents will do more of the browsing, comparing, and in some cases initiating the purchase. The advantage will come from having solid product and policy information, clear controls, and the right connections to make sure your differentiators show up well in those agent-led comparisons.

Based on the work we’ve been doing alongside our retail partners and the broader AI, tech and payments ecosystem, here are practical steps to take now:

1. Make your business “agent-readable,” not just consumer-friendly.

What matters is not just how you present your brand to people, but how clearly an AI agent can understand your differentiators, such as product attributes, pricing, availability, delivery and pickup options, installation and service, warranty and protection plans, and return/exchange policies. The goal is to ensure an agent can answer the questions that matter to the shopper, accurately and consistently.

2. Turn policies and fulfillment into competitive advantages.

Now, consider the many competing priorities and needs the home and furniture consumer must balance: delivery timing, room selection, assembly, haul-away and return logistics. They may want to visit a showroom to try out an item in person. What used to be “fine print” or would just happen naturally as part of the shopping experience becomes decision criteria when agents are optimizing for confidence and convenience. Retailers should expose these terms clearly and keep them current so agents don’t guess or steer shoppers away due to uncertainty. These lessons apply equally across industries, based on the criteria that matter most to consumers.

3. Bring financing and value into the conversation earlier.

Traditionally, financing shows up at checkout. In agentic commerce, however, checkout may be the last step in a longer conversational journey where carts are created and refined outside of your brand’s owned channels. To stay competitive, offers like promotional financing, prequalification, payment flexibility, and cardholder value such as cash back, rewards and special terms need to be available earlier so the agent can factor them in while it’s composing a recommendation to the shopper.

At Synchrony, we’re working to make financing and loyalty benefits machine-interpretable and discoverable in these new flows so an agent can understand eligibility, terms and value proposition without losing the nuance or the compliance rigor that consumer credit requires.

4. Build a “trust stack” for agent-led transactions.

Trust remains the foundation, but the mechanics change when software acts on someone’s behalf. Retailers will need clear controls around identity, consent, and permissions that define what an agent is allowed to do (and not do). As agent-led purchasing scales, retailers must also implement strong fraud prevention, dispute and chargeback readiness, and transparency so that when an agent recommends something, it’s clear what went into that choice.

Synchrony is investing here as well because payments and credit sit at the center of trust. That means secure authentication, responsible use of data, and resilient decisioning. It means creating experiences that protect consumers and retailers as new agent-driven patterns emerge.

5. Design for handoffs to humans.

The best experiences won’t be fully automated. They’ll be well-orchestrated. When an agent gets stuck on things like delivery exceptions, complex service issues, regulated items or custom orders, retailers should be able to route the conversation to an associate quickly with context intact. That blend of automation and human expertise is where many brands will differentiate.

The retailers best positioned for this shift will focus on clear information, flexible payments, and trust. That’s the work ahead, and it’s work Synchrony is doing with retailers now. If you’re exploring agent-led shopping, I’d love to hear about your approach and the challenges you’re facing. Reach out to me on LinkedIn here.

Patrice Boone is the senior vice president and chief marketing officer for the home and auto segment at Synchrony.