Trust, identity and payments: Preparing for agentic commerce in travel

Agentic commerce is a seismic shift in enterprise business. The PayPal-commissioned Agentic Commerce Pulse Report found that of 498 firms, 94% of large enterprises expect agentic commerce to have a positive business impact, 86% believe failing to adopt it could mean losing customers or revenue to competitors and 52% have already integrated it into regular operations.

Agentic commerce is top of mind for travel merchants too. While they’re keenly aware that artificial intelligence (AI) strongly influences travel discovery, they’re not yet prepared for when agents move from recommendations to bookings. Fortunately, the components for agentic commerce in travel have begun to converge, creating new opportunities for merchants that position themselves now for an agent-driven future.

The current state of agentic commerce

Agentic commerce is still somewhat misunderstood. The concept can conjure images of a future in which AI agents act autonomously, raising questions about whether they will act solely in the customer's best interests or allow brands, algorithms, commercial incentives or platform bias to exert undue influence.

In reality, consumers still make key decisions. Agents accelerate research, surface relevant options and simplify complex planning, but humans still review, refine and approve purchases.

Consumer trust is another issue travel retailers aspiring to a future with agentic commerce must grapple with. While customers are increasingly willing to hand over control to AI for low-risk tasks like researching destinations and comparing fares, they are less confident giving their credit cards and buying authority to AI agents without some safeguards.

Research shows that customers want to remain involved in important purchasing decisions rather than handing over complete control to an AI agent. According to another survey from PayPal and BigCommerce, “consumers are eager for AI-powered shopping assistance, but trust, security and purchase control will determine adoption.”

Travel makes the challenges associated with agentic commerce particularly demanding. Unlike a retail purchase, a travel booking may involve multiple suppliers, changing prices, fluctuating availability, complex itineraries, ancillary purchases and different rules for cancellations, refunds and post-booking changes. Plus, an AI agent must do more than identify and pay for a product. It must understand the full context of the trip and support the customer’s travel experience end-to-end—a journey that often requires coordination among multiple service providers.

The partnership between PayPal, Sabre and Mindtrip demonstrates how multiple systems can work securely across a travel transaction. Mindtrip’s conversational travel interface helps travelers explore and assemble a trip. Sabre provides access to travel content and booking capabilities and PayPal supports the trusted identity, authentication and payment layer. Customers review and approve the transaction as the journey moves from discovery to booking.

Adapting existing commerce infrastructure for agentic commerce

The good news is merchants don’t need to rebuild commerce infrastructure from scratch to implement agentic commerce. The infrastructure layer capable of proving identity and authority, communicating with merchants, constructing an order, authorizing payment, managing risk and creating an audit trail, the so-called “enabling rails” of commerce, already exist.

Modern checkout infrastructure has become much more flexible, supporting multiple payment methods, wallets and dynamic payment experiences. That flexibility makes today's checkout infrastructure well suited to evolve alongside new AI-powered purchasing journeys. Plus, merchants increasingly care about enabling successful payments regardless of how customers arrive at checkout, and that flexibility aligns well with agentic commerce.

To participate in agent-mediated commerce, AI agents must be able to access and interact with the same core systems that support traditional digital transactions, including:

• Customer identity and authentication
• Authorization rules defining what it is permitted to do
• Payment authorization (available funds, spending permissions, merchant restrictions, etc.)
• Commerce and checkout data relating to the products or services being purchased
• Risk, fraud and compliance systems
• Post-purchase capabilities such as refunds, modifications and additional payments

However, when the customer is an AI agent, the infrastructure needs to verify not only who the customer is but also what the agent is authorized to do on their behalf.

In a recent PhocusWire webinar, “The Rise in Agentic Commerce in Travel,” Judy Reeves, lead growth product manager for agentic commerce at PayPal, described the infrastructure features needed when the buying journey “moves from the research phase to the decision-making phase and commerce really starts to happen.” She advocated for “a trusted identity layer that provides authentication, fraud detection and verification.”

For agentic commerce to thrive, “all roads lead to trust,” Reeves said. “Merchants need to trust that transactions are verified and that they’ll get paid. Consumers need to trust that their money is protected and that the transaction is legitimate. [The platform ecosystem], travel providers and sellers and the payment rails need to trust each other to interoperate reliably. Payments are foundational to all of this.”

Meanwhile, the AI industry is still evolving. It needs standard ways to determine which AI agent is acting, who the agent represents, what permissions have been granted and how long those permissions remain valid. The agentic ecosystem also needs common standards and protocols so merchants, payment providers and AI platforms can work together consistently.

Travel needs to do its part also by making improvements in structured data, identity and delegated authorization so agents can understand inventory, traveler preferences, loyalty status and what they’re allowed to book. While payment systems are mature, the rest of the technology stack requires enhancements to become agent-ready.

Preparing travel merchants for what comes next

Even with the current infrastructure in transition, agentic commerce will likely become a formidable resource for travel consumers and service providers. The potential is significant. McKinsey research projects that “by 2030, the U.S. B2C retail market alone could see up to $1 trillion in orchestrated revenue from agentic commerce, with global projections reaching as high as $3 trillion to $5 trillion.”

No magic wand can transform digital commerce systems into agent-ready infrastructure. That’s a challenge the industry is actively working toward. However, there are critical steps merchants can take now to lay the groundwork for an AI-mediated journey from discovery through to post-purchase servicing, including:

• Making travel content and inventory (including accurate information on availability, pricing, restrictions) accessible to AI systems.
• Providing a trusted identity layer that can verify the customer and the agent acting on their behalf, with clear permissions defining what the agent can view, change or purchase.
• Offering flexible payment options with strong authentication and fraud controls that can protect transactions without adding unnecessary friction.
• Accessing systems that support refunds, cancellations, amendments, additional payments and a clear post-purchase audit trail

To achieve these readiness goals, merchants will need to partner with an agentic innovator and trusted commerce partner offering a modern payments foundation built on trust, identity, flexible checkout and scalable infrastructure to prepare them for tomorrow's AI-powered travel journeys.