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INSIGHTS

Trust in agentic commerce: The problem that could derail an industry

Author: Marc Vanlerberghe, Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer, Algorand Foundation

The promise of agentic artificial intelligence seems almost too good to be true: software agents that can shop on your behalf, negotiate with merchants, manage your finances, and handle tedious administrative tasks. The market is moving fast. Investors see dollar signs. Entrepreneurs are building furiously. Yet as the industry scales, a critical problem is becoming impossible to ignore: no one trusts these agents.

This trust crisis has two distinct dimensions. The first is personal. When you give an agent access to your accounts and credentials, can you really trust it to behave as intended? The second is structural. When a merchant accepts a transaction from an unknown shopping agent, can they verify who is actually behind that agent? And when a user shops with a merchant shopping agent, is that agent really owned by the merchant? The damage is already mounting. Agents have frozen assets, drained accounts, and deleted critical data. Users and merchants alike are paying the price.

In this special report, discover:
  • The user's dilemma: Why today's AI agent architectures ask users to place more trust in software than they should.
  • The merchant's problem: The hidden trust gap that could undermine agentic commerce before it reaches scale.
  • The user's blind spot: How fraudulent AI agents could impersonate trusted brands — and why users have no easy way to tell.
  • Why provenance matters: The missing trust layer that could determine whether agentic commerce succeeds or fails.
  • A new approach: How identity, permissions, and cryptographic trust could reshape the future of autonomous commerce.
  • What's next: Why open standards—not proprietary platforms — will be essential to making agentic commerce work.
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