Consumer trust in AI shopping mixed bag

Consumers increasingly use AI to find the best deals on products. Yet fewer than one in four trust generative AI to handle payment transactions on their behalf. That's a key finding detailed in the Visa Trust Index for agentic commerce.

Only 23 percent of U.S. consumers trust Gen AI to handle payments on their behalf, Visa reported. However, confidence in agentic commerce shifts when payment brands come into play. And Visa emerged as the most trusted brand for AI-powered payments: 61 percent of those surveyed said they would trust Visa to handle agentic transactions.

"AI has the potential to fundamentally reshape how people discover, buy and pay for goods and services, much like eCommerce and mobile commerce before it," said Oliver Jenkyn, group president at Visa. "While we're still in the early days, trust will be foundational to driving agentic commerce adoption. Consumers will increasingly look to trust payment experiences and brands as they deploy AI to shop on their behalf."

72 percent of consumers have used AI assist

Visa said its Trust Index indicates consumer adoption of AI is already widespread with 72 percent of consumers having used an AI assistant to shop. Still, trust plays a big role as AI continues to change the way people discover and shop for products and services.

Visa said it studied multiple sectors, including payments, technology and social media, and found it was the most trusted brand for AI-powered payments among consumers surveyed. The survey was conducted by Harris Poll for Visa, using Harris's omnibus survey platform, a recurring bi-weekly survey. It was fielded May 26 to 28, in the United States. In all, 2,065 Americans were queried for the survey.

Visa pointed out that its position as a trusted payments brand led across key demographic groups, rising to 68 percent among consumers between the ages of 18 and 34, and 71 percent among frequent AI users.

The findings suggest consumers distinguish between the AI tools they use and the payment brands they trust. While consumers may engage with a range of AI assistants and platforms, trust in payments remain central to their willingness to complete transactions in agentic commerce environments, Visa said in a press release.

Providing stability and certainty

"Throughout every major shift in commerce, from the growth of eCommerce to the rise of mobile payments, trust provides stability and certainty to consumers as the world changes around them," Jenkyn said. "The challenge is making agentic commerce secure, permissioned and reliable enough to scale,"

The Visa trust index shows consumers are beginning to define what they expect from the companies that will help power the next era of commerce, Jack Forestell, chief product and strategy officer at Visa explained in a Sept. 9, 2026, blog post. "I believe we can do it – and when we do, it may represent the biggest shift in digital commerce that I've seen in more than two decades in payments." He wrote.

Some of the initial scaled use cases for AI commerce are not consumers, but businesses, Forestell mentioned. Think in terms of procurement, supplier onboarding and invoicing. "This work is repetitive, rules based and ripe for better automation," he said.

This same logic applies to machine-to-machine payments, developer environments and embedded commerce flows. "Anywhere agents can turn intent into action with less friction," Forestell noted. "Commerce scales when people and businesses trust it. To realize the promise of agentic commerce we must close the trust gap – that's the work ahead."

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