At Google I/O 2025, Google unveiled a suite of AI-powered innovations designed to reshape online shopping, but one feature stands out for its disruptive potential: agentic AI checkout.
Google’s agentic AI checkout
As with the other rash of announcements from payments heavyweights in the last weeks, this next-generation functionality does more than assist — it acts.
By combining personalised price tracking with autonomous purchasing capabilities, Google is positioning itself not merely as a search engine, but as a transactional agent in the shopping process.
Agentic AI
Agentic checkout signals a significant shift in how consumers interact with ecommerce platforms.
Traditionally, the burden of navigating a purchase — from discovering a product to completing a transaction — has fallen squarely on the user.
But Google’s new feature promises to offload much of that cognitive and logistical effort to artificial intelligence.
The process is strikingly simple.
A user can tap “track price” on any product listing within Google Search.
From there, they can filter for preferences such as size, colour, or maximum price, setting a personalised alert.
Once the product meets the target price, Google notifies the user and — crucially — offers a “buy for me” button.
This agentic feature automatically transfers the item into the merchant’s checkout, applies Google Pay credentials, and secures the purchase.
Automated Shopping
What sets this apart from earlier iterations of automated shopping is its integration with broader agentic capabilities emerging from Google’s Project Mariner.
Rather than relying on a single search query, Google’s AI Mode leverages a “query fan-out” technique, launching multiple sub-queries in parallel to surface the most relevant, real-time results.
Whether one is looking for waterproof bags for a rainy trip to Portland or affordable football tickets for the weekend, Google’s AI Mode actively interprets the user’s intent and handles the grunt work.
This is a prime example of AI moving from information retrieval to task execution.
In a world where attention is the most precious commodity, the ability of an AI assistant to act autonomously — not just suggest but do — could alter consumer behaviour at scale.
For merchants, it introduces a new kind of customer: not a browsing individual, but an algorithm with a brief.
Far-Reaching Consequences
This evolution is likely to have far-reaching consequences for the payments landscape.
First, it raises the stakes in terms of payment orchestration.
Merchants must now ensure that their checkouts are seamlessly compatible with AI-driven flows.
Google’s use of Google Pay for agentic checkout ensures a fast and secure experience, but it also raises competitive questions for other digital wallets and payment processors.
Secondly, this marks a subtle power shift in e-commerce.
While retailers previously maintained control over the path to purchase, Google’s agentic AI sits at the top of the funnel — shaping choices, tracking deals, and ultimately executing transactions.
This may disintermediate the retailer’s direct influence, reinforcing Google’s dominance in the digital value chain.
Finally, the notion of a “hands-off” purchase introduces a new set of considerations around consumer consent, returns, and liability.
As AI systems increasingly act on users’ behalf, the need for regulatory clarity and ethical AI governance becomes more urgent.
Google’s announcement is, on one hand, a technical tour de force.
But on the other, it is a marker of a broader transition: from search engines that help you decide, to intelligent agents that decide with you — or even for you.
The next frontier in digital payments may not be about speed or security alone, but about who (or what) is making the purchase in the first place.
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