London Fintech Podcast
00:18:17 · Rohit Mishra
Is right now a lot of the work we are doing on agent tech is on the traditional card transaction, but how do we make sure that all the new... All the diverse ways that buyers like to pay installments is one of the one of one of the key ways, and all the other local payment method schemes around the world, how do all of those work well with agent tech so that buyers continue to have the flexibility of payment choice that they that they expect? Their loyalty works as they expect. They have the same access to being able to use gift cards or store credit or discounts. And I think as the experience becomes more wider and more complete, that will drive more trust and and and that that will continue to help us accelerate it into commerce.
00:19:04 · Tony Clark
[00:19:04] S1: There's a lot there, Rohit. So I think the core theme was trust, and I want to just ask you about that. There's also quite a bit you started to talk about about how to make it work, so we'll come on to that. But trust, your own holiday retail report, I I understand, said over half of people are comfortable letting AI recommend. 41% would let the AI build their shopping cart, but only 28% would trust it to actually complete the purchase. So, I mean, I'm sure if you'd run that stat a year ago, the numbers would have been way lower. There was almost no agentic commerce. So as you said, the curve is exponential. But trust, how do we build trust? I mean, that must be a, you know, if not the most important one of the one of the most important things that Shopify is focused on here because it's... Trust underpins the adoption. But what do you need to do in the shopping experience to to build that trust?
00:19:56 · Rohit Mishra
[00:19:56] S0: Yeah. So from trust in the shopping experience happens in in in in a few different ways. So I will... Let's think about what happens when you are considering a product and then... And trust you need there versus what happens once you have decided, okay. I want to... I do like this particular product. I want... I would love to buy that. Upfront, I think the most important part of trust is just having access to a lot of products. Like, you want to buy things where you are confident that you and, hence, your agent has access to the widest variety of products that it is looking at and making sure that is... That it is surfacing the right products for you. That's where work that we have... Things like making sure that the catalog that the agent is working through is really large and diverse becomes really important. And then we'll talk about some of the work that Shopify is doing here, but in this area, which will sound... Which will seem very congruent with the problems we are talking about here. But it's access to a catalog, the richness of the catalog. Are you seeing the right information? Do you have the right attributes of the product that your age... That your agent can reason about, that you can reason about with your agent? And then as you move further down the funnel, that's where, for example, over 55% of consumers who come to our storefronts in The UK already are using Shop Pay. So you want their agent to be able to give you the same method that you are used to using, the methods that bring bring you trust and confidence when you are buying on the Internet, the same thing needs to... Those same methods need to be available to you within the agentic interface. That's a large part of trust. And then there there is more work here to be done for sure on how do protections work, making sure that there is clarity for the consumer that if they are using their credit card for... On an agent, the the protections and rewards that they expect on... When using that credit card, that apply irrespective of the format. And then that's where some of the agent tokenization work that I talked about earlier with card networks become so important. And and and we are...
00:22:10 · Rohit Mishra, Tony Clark
And we're very we're very hopeful that as we keep chipping away at these different ways of trust, both in the commerce part of the journey as well as in the payments part of that journey, When you... When we run this survey six months from now, significant... The numbers will continue to significantly increase. I think it's like... If you asked me, as you said, a year back, hey. What percent of users do you think consumers will be like, yeah. Agents go complete this transaction for me. I would have said even single digits is... Would be would be an exceptional. The fact that over a quarter of users already are comfortable, I think is a is a great outcome of how well agents have been doing, how well the ecosystem is is doing to create this new form of commerce. But I think a long way to go here, but signs are really good right now on that things are moving in the right direction. [00:23:05] S1: So information, choice, familiarity, control risk management, so all... Those are all part of it.
00:23:05 · Tony Clark, Rohit Mishra
[00:23:05] S1: So information, choice, familiarity, control risk management, so all... Those are all part of it. [00:23:13] S0: Yeah. And and I think the... Again, to make sure that entrepreneurs are as successful as large marketplaces and retailers are, it's important that the trust deficit that you may have because you're dealing with a new brand. Platforms like Shopify, the work that we are doing with Shopify and Shop Pay, we're trying to bridge that trust deficit by saying, hey. Here's the wallet. That wallet is really secure. It has all your information. It's a really seamless purchase experience. And once you buy, the same... You will get a notification in our app. You can track your order all the way down to your doorstep. And I think that end to end experience, you repeat that as it's many, many, many transactions. And and I think that builds the trust. And what we have to make sure now is that we are working really... Working well with many of the agent tech platforms to make sure Shop Pay is available on those platforms as well as that the full end to end user journey of consideration, buying with Shop Pay, tracking the Shop app, that works consistently. [00:24:17] S1: Yeah. And that's a nice link to talking about how you enable agentic commerce. So can you talk me through what do you have to change in that transaction workflow when there's an agent in the middle to make that work?
00:24:34 · Rohit Mishra
[00:24:34] S0: I'll say, like, the the... I'll talk you through the three big pieces that Shopify has been working on. We we referred to, obviously, some some of this catalog, Universal Commerce Protocol, and the work on Shop Pay itself. But catalog is probably the... One of the most underlooked things in agentic right now because agentic commerce or any form of commerce is only as as good as the... Like, it's it's kind of... Think of you walk into a retail store. You are you you are hopeful. Whether it's a single brand store or a multi brand store, you are hopeful that they have good products. Otherwise, why you... Why would you even walk into them? And so the same thing applies equally to agents. You're going to ask an agent, hey. What what jacket should I buy? What shoe should I buy? What television should I buy? You are hoping that the agent has access to a wide diverse set of product catalog that that they can both reach for. They understand the details about that catalog. So I think the most important thing is catalog. At Shopify, we have built a thing called the Shopify global catalog. What this does is it takes products from all the brands on Shopify and makes it available to agents in an agent friendly format. So we do a lot of work on deducing, enriching these products with additional metadata, and then making it available to agents in a structured format so that they can they can more easily consume and and and and surface these products. We we are seeing some very, very strong signs of when products show up in in the Shopify catalog, those products get a lot more traffic and conversion via agents versus otherwise. So that's that's, I would say, is the the one the more... One of the more important pieces. And then you go into Universal Commerce Protocol and and and how agentic checkout works. And if I want... If I really... For my business, it's really important that the buyers picks a delivery date because my delivery has some nuances. It's important that as a... Both is on the consumer end and the merchant end that whether I'm buying on by... On the Internet or I'm buying via my my favorite agent, that information is still collected. And so what we have done with Universal Commerce Protocol is let merchants in a very seamless way express what their unique things about their business are, the information that they need from the buyer.