{"id":5021,"date":"2026-08-19T15:18:48","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T15:18:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apadmi.com\/?post_type=insight&p=5021"},"modified":"2026-08-19T15:18:50","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T15:18:50","slug":"agentic-commerce-in-2026-separating-the-real-from-the-hype","status":"publish","type":"insight","link":"https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/insights\/agentic-commerce-in-2026-separating-the-real-from-the-hype\/","title":{"rendered":"Agentic Commerce in 2026: Separating the real from the hype"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t
\n\t\t
\n\t\n\t\tAgentic Commerce in 2026: Separating the real from the hype\t<\/h1>\n\n\t\n\t\n\t<\/div>\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t
\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t
\n\t\t
\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\t

\n\t\t\tEvery retailer and consumer brand is currently being asked the same question by their board: what’s our agent strategy?\t\t<\/p>\n\t\n\t\n\t

\n\t\t\n

\n\tMost of the answers on the table are built on vibes rather than a clear read of what’s actually live, what’s still vapourware, and where the real risk sits. That’s especially true in the Netherlands, where the payments landscape doesn’t quite match the US-centric picture most agentic commerce coverage assumes.<\/p>\n\n

\n\tIn short, agentic commerce hands part of the buying decision to software: an AI agent searches, compares, and (with permission) pays, removing the usual browsing and checkout friction. McKinsey<\/a> puts the global opportunity at $3-5 trillion by 2030. OpenAI also had to scale back its own flagship agentic checkout feature this year. Both are true at once, and it’s worth understanding why before deciding what to build.<\/p>\n\n\n\tWhat’s live, versus what’s still a slide in a deck<\/h2>\n\n

\n\tAutonomy sits on a spectrum, and almost everything live today sits well short of full autonomy. Ask an agent to book a hotel under \u20ac120 a night with free cancellation, and it’ll check a handful of sites, apply your filters, and either surface a shortlist or book outright if you’ve given it standing permission. Genuine end-to-end autonomy, the agent buying without asking, is currently limited to low-stakes repeat purchases like grocery reordering.<\/p>\n\n

\n\tWhat’s measurable today is research, not autonomous buying. Bain found<\/a> 30-45% of US consumers already use generative AI for product research, but roughly half still won’t let an AI complete a purchase unsupervised.<\/p>\n\n\n\tThe Dutch wrinkle most agentic commerce coverage misses: iDEAL<\/h2>\n\n

\n\tNearly every protocol built for agentic checkout, such as Stripe’s Shared Payment Token API or OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol, assumes a card-first world. That’s not the Dutch market. iDEAL (now migrating to the pan-European Wero brand) still handles the majority of online payments here, built on direct bank redirects rather than card rails. Any retailer building agent-ready checkout for Dutch customers needs that flow to support iDEAL\/Wero natively, not just card tokens \u2014 otherwise “agent-ready” checkout simply won’t work for most Dutch shoppers.<\/p>\n\n

\n\tThis isn’t a theoretical concern. Adyen, the Amsterdam-headquartered payments giant, has been actively discussing agentic commerce with the Dutch fintech community, including at a recent Amsterdam event with the Holland Fintech Association, where the consistent message was that European consumer comfort drops sharply as agent autonomy increases. People are fine with AI summarising reviews, but far more hesitant about autonomous checkout.<\/p>\n\n\n\tUnder the hood: the protocols, briefly<\/h2>\n\n

\n\tNone of this requires ripping out an existing backend. Most merchants already run payments through infrastructure, Stripe or Adyen being the obvious examples, that agentic protocols are built to sit on top of, so enabling agent-ready checkout is often closer to a configuration change than a rebuild.<\/p>\n\n

\n\tEach protocol solves a narrow problem: AP2 handles spending authorisation limits, ACP handles the transaction itself (order details, payment token, delivery info), and MCP lets an agent pull live inventory or pricing from a merchant’s own systems. Most of what’s live today is a structured checkout API rather than genuine agent-to-agent negotiation, worth remembering the next time a vendor pitches full autonomy.<\/p>\n\n

\n\tGenuine agent-to-agent commerce, where a buyer’s agent negotiates directly with a seller’s system, is a different proposition, and one we’ve previously explored<\/a>. Which model ends up dominating a given category is still an open question, and depends on which protocol merchants and platforms adopt at scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\tReality check: what happened when this went live<\/h2>\n\n

\n\tOpenAI’s Instant Checkout launched in September 2025 with over a million Shopify merchants reportedly lined up. By March 2026, roughly 30 merchants had actually gone live, and OpenAI has since pulled back from native in-chat checkout in favour of an app-based model that redirects to the merchant’s own site. Payments, fraud checks, tax and returns don’t get easier just because an AI model is involved, and not every retailer wants agents involved at all. Amazon has blocked ChatGPT from its site and sued Perplexity over browser-based scraping.<\/p>\n\n

\n\tWhat is growing fast is AI-driven research traffic; Adobe Analytics<\/a> recorded a 693% year-over-year jump in US retail traffic from generative AI sources over the 2025 holiday season. Grocery and CPG replenishment remains the strongest real case for genuine autonomous purchasing today.<\/p>\n\n\n\tWhat this means if you’re building a commerce app<\/h2>\n\n

\n\tWhatever happens with autonomous checkout on your platform, one thing is worth doing regardless: make your product data legible to agents, the same way you’d optimise it for search engines. That means structured, machine-readable feeds with price, availability, variants, delivery windows, returns all using schema.org Product markup and a real-time API an agent can query, rather than scraping rendered HTML.<\/p>\n\n

\n\tAn API-first, headless commerce backend is naturally closer to agent-ready than one where product data and pricing logic are tangled into a monolithic frontend. For Dutch retailers specifically, that also means making sure iDEAL\/Wero sits properly inside that API layer, not bolted on as an afterthought once a US-built protocol has already assumed cards.<\/p>\n\n\n\tTrust is the real constraint<\/h2>\n\n

\n\tGartner predicts<\/a> more than 40% of agentic AI projects will be cancelled by the end of 2027, citing unclear business value and “agent washing,” where ordinary chatbots get rebranded as agentic with no real autonomy behind them.<\/p>\n\n

\n\tFor merchants, the practical risks are fraud (distinguishing a legitimate agent from a scraper) and accountability (who’s liable when an agent buys the wrong item). Regulation hasn’t settled either; EU-level rules are expected to shape investment through 2026, which matters more directly for Dutch retailers than for US-focused competitors given the EU’s regulatory reach.<\/p>\n\n\n\tWhere to start<\/h2>\n\n

\n\tThree questions worth answering before investing further: <\/p>\n\n

\n\t#1 Can an agent actually read your pricing, stock and delivery data today, or is it locked inside frontend templates built for human eyes?

#2 Is your growth better served by showing up inside agents you don’t control, or by building your own assistant?

#3 Is your architecture flexible enough to survive the next eighteen months of protocol churn, including the iDEAL-to-Wero transition already underway?<\/p>\n\n

\n\tIf you sell to consumers who may increasingly be represented by AI agents, it\u2019s also worth considering what that shift means for customer retention. We\u2019ve explored this elsewhere, looking at what agentic AI means for loyalty<\/a> and the buyer agents<\/a> your sell-side strategy will need to anticipate.<\/p>\n\n

\n\tWant to understand what agentic commerce could mean for your business, your digital products and your customers? Contact <\/a>our mobile experts today.<\/p>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t

\n\t\t\n\t\n\t
\n\t\t\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tLet’s build what’s next\t\t\t<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\tWe work with ambitious organisations to design, build, and scale digital products that solve real problems, improve customer experiences, and deliver measurable impact.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\tContact Us\t<\/span>\n\n\t<\/a>\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\t<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8572,"template":"","meta":{"es_utils_meta_schema":"","esPageTheme":"default","esPageBackground":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5021","insight","type-insight","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nAgentic Commerce in the Netherlands | Insights | Apadmi<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Apadmi\u2019s mobile experts explore the state of agentic commerce in the Netherlands, sharing live use cases and what comes next.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/insights\/https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/insights\/agentic-commerce-in-2026-separating-the-real-from-the-hype\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Agentic Commerce in the Netherlands | Insights | Apadmi\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Apadmi\u2019s mobile experts explore the state of agentic commerce in the Netherlands, sharing live use cases and what comes next.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/insights\/https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/insights\/agentic-commerce-in-2026-separating-the-real-from-the-hype\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Apadmi\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-08-19T15:18:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/apadmi.com\/uploads\/2026\/08\/orange-blocks-insight.webp\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"900\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/webp\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.apadmi.com\\\/en-nl\\\/insights\\\/agentic-commerce-in-2026-separating-the-real-from-the-hype\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.apadmi.com\\\/en-nl\\\/insights\\\/https%3a\\\/\\\/www.apadmi.com\\\/en-nl\\\/insights\\\/agentic-commerce-in-2026-separating-the-real-from-the-hype\\\/\",\"name\":\"Agentic Commerce in the Netherlands | Insights | Apadmi\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.apadmi.com\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.apadmi.com\\\/en-nl\\\/insights\\\/https%3a\\\/\\\/www.apadmi.com\\\/en-nl\\\/insights\\\/agentic-commerce-in-2026-separating-the-real-from-the-hype\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.apadmi.com\\\/en-nl\\\/insights\\\/https%3a\\\/\\\/www.apadmi.com\\\/en-nl\\\/insights\\\/agentic-commerce-in-2026-separating-the-real-from-the-hype\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/apadmi.com\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/orange-blocks-insight.webp\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-08-19T15:18:48+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-08-19T15:18:50+00:00\",\"description\":\"Apadmi\u2019s mobile experts explore the state of agentic commerce in the Netherlands, sharing live use cases and what comes next.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.apadmi.com\\\/en-nl\\\/insights\\\/https%3a\\\/\\\/www.apadmi.com\\\/en-nl\\\/insights\\\/agentic-commerce-in-2026-separating-the-real-from-the-hype\\\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-NL\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.apadmi.com\\\/en-nl\\\/insights\\\/https%3a\\\/\\\/www.apadmi.com\\\/en-nl\\\/insights\\\/agentic-commerce-in-2026-separating-the-real-from-the-hype\\\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-NL\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.apadmi.com\\\/en-nl\\\/insights\\\/https%3a\\\/\\\/www.apadmi.com\\\/en-nl\\\/insights\\\/agentic-commerce-in-2026-separating-the-real-from-the-hype\\\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/apadmi.com\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/orange-blocks-insight.webp\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/apadmi.com\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/orange-blocks-insight.webp\",\"width\":1600,\"height\":900},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.apadmi.com\\\/en-nl\\\/insights\\\/https%3a\\\/\\\/www.apadmi.com\\\/en-nl\\\/insights\\\/agentic-commerce-in-2026-separating-the-real-from-the-hype\\\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.apadmi.com\\\/en-nl\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Agentic Commerce in 2026: Separating the real from the hype\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.apadmi.com\\\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.apadmi.com\\\/\",\"name\":\"Apadmi\",\"description\":\"\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.apadmi.com\\\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.apadmi.com\\\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-NL\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.apadmi.com\\\/#organization\",\"name\":\"Apadmi\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.apadmi.com\\\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-NL\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.apadmi.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/logo\\\/image\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/apadmi.com\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/Apadmi-favicon.webp\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/apadmi.com\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/Apadmi-favicon.webp\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"Apadmi\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.apadmi.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/logo\\\/image\\\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.instagram.com\\\/apadmi\\\/\",\"https:\\\/\\\/www.linkedin.com\\\/company\\\/apadmi-ltd\\\/\",\"https:\\\/\\\/www.youtube.com\\\/c\\\/ApadmiLtd\"]}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Agentic Commerce in the Netherlands | Insights | Apadmi","description":"Apadmi\u2019s mobile experts explore the state of agentic commerce in the Netherlands, sharing live use cases and what comes next.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/insights\/https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/insights\/agentic-commerce-in-2026-separating-the-real-from-the-hype\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Agentic Commerce in the Netherlands | Insights | Apadmi","og_description":"Apadmi\u2019s mobile experts explore the state of agentic commerce in the Netherlands, sharing live use cases and what comes next.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/insights\/https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/insights\/agentic-commerce-in-2026-separating-the-real-from-the-hype\/","og_site_name":"Apadmi","article_modified_time":"2026-08-19T15:18:50+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1600,"height":900,"url":"https:\/\/apadmi.com\/uploads\/2026\/08\/orange-blocks-insight.webp","type":"image\/webp"}],"twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/insights\/agentic-commerce-in-2026-separating-the-real-from-the-hype\/","url":"https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/insights\/https%3a\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/insights\/agentic-commerce-in-2026-separating-the-real-from-the-hype\/","name":"Agentic Commerce in the Netherlands | Insights | Apadmi","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/insights\/https%3a\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/insights\/agentic-commerce-in-2026-separating-the-real-from-the-hype\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/insights\/https%3a\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/insights\/agentic-commerce-in-2026-separating-the-real-from-the-hype\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/apadmi.com\/uploads\/2026\/08\/orange-blocks-insight.webp","datePublished":"2026-08-19T15:18:48+00:00","dateModified":"2026-08-19T15:18:50+00:00","description":"Apadmi\u2019s mobile experts explore the state of agentic commerce in the Netherlands, sharing live use cases and what comes next.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/insights\/https%3a\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/insights\/agentic-commerce-in-2026-separating-the-real-from-the-hype\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-NL","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/insights\/https%3a\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/insights\/agentic-commerce-in-2026-separating-the-real-from-the-hype\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-NL","@id":"https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/insights\/https%3a\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/insights\/agentic-commerce-in-2026-separating-the-real-from-the-hype\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/apadmi.com\/uploads\/2026\/08\/orange-blocks-insight.webp","contentUrl":"https:\/\/apadmi.com\/uploads\/2026\/08\/orange-blocks-insight.webp","width":1600,"height":900},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/insights\/https%3a\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/insights\/agentic-commerce-in-2026-separating-the-real-from-the-hype\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Agentic Commerce in 2026: Separating the real from the hype"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/","name":"Apadmi","description":"","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-NL"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/#organization","name":"Apadmi","url":"https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-NL","@id":"https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/apadmi.com\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Apadmi-favicon.webp","contentUrl":"https:\/\/apadmi.com\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Apadmi-favicon.webp","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"Apadmi"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/apadmi\/","https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/apadmi-ltd\/","https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/c\/ApadmiLtd"]}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/insight\/5021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/insight"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/insight"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/insight\/5021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8576,"href":"https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/insight\/5021\/revisions\/8576"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apadmi.com\/en-nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}