India's digital commerce companies are preparing for a future where personal artificial intelligence (AI) assistants could increasingly make online shopping decisions and carry out transactions on behalf of consumers, according to The Economic Times. Ecommerce platforms, online travel agencies and insurance marketplaces have begun reassessing product pricing, customer acquisition costs and bot-verification systems as AI agents capable of operating with a degree of autonomy gain ground. These personal assistants can book restaurant tables, schedule product returns, find savings on car insurance and negotiate for services, potentially increasing transaction volumes for online businesses but also reducing opportunities for platforms to interact directly with consumers.
Marketing agency VML's Future Shopper 2026 report, based on 28,000 consumers across 17 countries, shows that AI is already becoming part of the shopping journey. As reported by Business Standard, it found that 82% of consumers surveyed have used AI, while 50% would prefer to tell an AI what they want, receive tailored options and buy in one place. At the same time, 58% said they cross-check AI recommendations before purchasing. The figures point to a distinction between using AI as a shopping assistant and allowing it to act independently, with consumers appearing more comfortable asking AI to narrow down choices than handing it complete control of the transaction. According to Visa's Rishi Chhabra, the AI-driven shopping journey can evolve in two stages - product discovery where AI understands consumer preferences, and payment where agents potentially make transactions on behalf of consumers.
Indian banks have been warning customers about AI-powered fraud, with private Indian bank Bandhan Bank warning about AI-powered scams involving voice cloning, realistic videos, fake conversations and personalised fraud attempts. According to Business Standard, the basic advice remains familiar: customers should check the website domain, avoid unknown links and never share card details, CVV, PIN, net-banking credentials or transaction OTPs. However, AI shopping agents introduce a different problem where the consumer may not be visiting a suspicious website or responding to an obvious scam message - instead, an AI system could be making choices on the consumer's behalf. As Visa's Chhabra noted, allowing an AI agent to make payments introduces an entirely different dimension of risk, requiring multiple layers of authentication, verification and control. Companies are working on technical and legal safeguards to address these risks, with some approaching lawyers to assess changes required to privacy policies to comply with India's data protection law and obtain consent for transactions carried out by AI agents.
Several global banks have proposed that consumers should be told when an AI agent is involved in a transaction, with greater transparency around how agents make decisions and stronger safeguards for customer data. According to Business Standard, the issue for banks is not only whether an AI agent can make a payment, but whether the payment can be authenticated, monitored and disputed in the same way as a transaction initiated directly by a customer. This creates questions around what the customer actually authorised and where responsibility lies if the agent makes a mistake. Visa has been working globally for more than 18 months on infrastructure required to make agentic payments secure, developing a trusted agent protocol and a directory to distinguish legitimate AI agents from fraudulent ones while addressing evolving fraud liability rules. Industry experts noted that agentic transactions can be both disruptive and opportunistic for consumer tech companies, with marketplaces needing to reconsider commission-sharing arrangements with sellers and retrain recommendation engines.
The timing is important as India's major ecommerce platforms are entering the period when online shopping activity typically rises around Dussehra and Diwali, followed by year-end sales. According to Business Standard, this year's festive period is different from earlier sales because AI shopping tools are more developed and consumers are becoming more familiar with them. The technology is also moving closer to transactions rather than remaining limited to chat-based product discovery, making festive sales an early test of how consumers use AI for real purchases. As Visa's Chhabra emphasized, the next phase of digital commerce will be built around a new layer of trust as consumers increasingly allow AI agents to act on their behalf, with the fundamental proposition to remove the cognitive burden of searching and comparing products. Some Indian companies have already started enabling agentic shopping, with Zomato releasing a Model Context Protocol server and MakeMyTrip announcing a collaboration with OpenAI through its Myra interface.
