Despite fast-growing adoption of agentic AI and consumers becoming more comfortable with zero-click commerce, caution kicks in for higher-value purchases, with UK shoppers putting a £150 price cap on autonomous AI spending, new data from the MACH Alliance reveals.
Research of over 1,000 UK consumers showed that two-thirds (67 per cent) now use AI within the search and discovery phases of their buying journeys – rising to 92 per cent of Millennials and 89 per cent of Gen Z. However, consumers remain cautious about passing purchasing control fully over to AI agents.
A third (32 per cent) of shoppers say they are happy for AI to take control of researching a purchase, but they still want to retain authority over the final product selection and spending decision. Just one in ten (9 per cent) said they would be comfortable with AI completing a payment autonomously for them, dipping even lower to 4 per cent for complex or high-consideration purchases.
According to the poll, UK consumers’ trust threshold for AI spending is capped at £149.12 – the average transaction amount that shoppers would be comfortable with AI agents making on their behalf. Younger shoppers were more willing to give greater payment autonomy to AI agents compared with older consumer cohorts; Millennials were comfortable with AI making larger transactions of up to £235 on average, while Baby Boomers would cap autonomous AI spend at just £67 per transaction.
This suggests that consumer trust remains a key barrier to end-to-end agentic shopping, with retailers needing to bridge the gap between shoppers being comfortable with AI influencing purchasing decisions and trusting it to transact autonomously on their behalf.
“Tackling the AI trust gap will depend on brands’ ability to move agentic AI from influence to reliable execution across the entire buying journey,” Jason Cottrell, President of the MACH Alliance, explained. “As agents take on greater purchasing autonomy, the tech stacks underpinning them must enable them to act accurately and securely across everything from product information and real-time inventory to payments and fulfilment.”
“Trust ultimately comes down to executional accuracy at every stage of the journey. Retailers need the right agentic capabilities and data, but they also need the flexibility to govern how those agents act. That’s where open, composable architectures become critical, giving businesses the control and agility they need to adopt agentic commerce with confidence,” he added.
Retailers are already beginning to move towards agentic payment execution and zero-click commerce, with brands including JD Sports Fashion testing AI-led shopping journeys that connect product discovery directly into checkout and payment. Debenhams has also begun exploring native agentic checkout experiences that allow shoppers to discover and purchase products within AI-powered shopping environments.
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