Key Takeaways
- Juniper Research projects agentic commerce users to reach 1.3 billion by 2031, with transaction value hitting $3.5 trillion
- Growth is driven by three forces: direct support from major retailers, growing consumer comfort with AI, and maturing payment infrastructure
- The report warns that card-dominated payments could cap market growth, pushing retailers to support diverse, local payment methods
Juniper Research Maps the Agentic Commerce Growth Curve
The number of agentic commerce users can reach 1.3 billion by 2031, up from less than 300 million this year, according to the newly-released study conducted by Juniper Research.
technode.globalUK-based analyst firm Juniper Research has published a new study, "Agentic Commerce Market: 2026-2031." Its headline forecast is clear. The number of users of agentic commerce, where AI agents autonomously search for products, purchase them, and handle payment on a person's behalf, will grow from under 300 million in 2026 to 1.3 billion by 2031.
That figure represents roughly 350% growth. Even while this new mode of shopping is still in its experimental phase, the projection has the user base more than quadrupling in just five years. Juniper Research analyzed 38,000 data points over the five-year period to arrive at the forecast.
What stands out even more than user growth is the steepness of the transaction-value curve. Total agentic commerce transaction value is expected to climb from $8 billion in 2026 to $3.5 trillion by 2031, an increase of 43,240%. The pattern points to per-user transaction volume swelling significantly over time.
| Metric | 2026 | 2031 |
|---|---|---|
| Users | Under 300 million | 1.3 billion |
| Transaction value | $8 billion | $3.5 trillion |
| User growth | — | ~350% increase |
| Transaction value growth | — | 43,240% increase |
Why Users Are Expected to Surge Now
Juniper Research cites three forces behind this rapid expansion. The first is the spread of direct support from major retailers. Until recently, agent-driven purchasing came in through a side door that retailers had not designed for. Now that major retailers are officially building agent-facing pathways, the foundation for transactions is falling into place fast.
The second factor is consumer comfort with AI. The report acknowledges that user trust and familiarity remain low today. Yet as AI becomes embedded in daily life and retailers roll out agent capabilities one after another, it expects this to change quickly. The everyday chat assistant becoming the shopping window itself is the kind of experience that gradually lowers resistance.
The third is maturing payment infrastructure. Purchases cannot close unless agents can actually move money. Here, the build-out of payment protocols centered on card networks is moving at pace. None of the three drivers works in isolation; they reinforce one another as they push the market upward.
Who Controls Payments: Mastercard, Visa, and Stripe
An earlier Juniper Research report from April lays out the competitive ranking of payment infrastructure providers. Topping the 2026 Competitor Leaderboard was Mastercard, followed by Visa and Stripe. The ranking evaluated 14 leading payment providers on the capabilities that enable agentic flows and their participation in the relevant protocols.
The leaders' moves are concrete. Mastercard is advancing agent authentication and transaction tokenization through "Agent Pay," while Visa has launched "Intelligent Commerce" to build consumer delegation frameworks. Stripe, for its part, co-developed the "Agentic Commerce Protocol" with OpenAI, powering the infrastructure behind ChatGPT's instant checkout. The firms that engaged with the frameworks early are cementing their advantage in this market.
Nick Maynard, VP at Juniper Research, notes that early participation in these frameworks has been highly beneficial, and that as agentic commerce broadens, these protocols will be vital to a payment provider's success. The same research also projects agentic commerce spending to reach $1.5 trillion by 2030, meaning the 2031 figure of $3.5 trillion factors in further acceleration beyond that point.
The Card-Dominance Trap
A warning the report returns to repeatedly is the risk of payment methods skewing toward cards. Today, card payments lead agentic transactions through tokenization support. But Maynard states plainly that card domination is not in the market's best interests.
The reason lies in how fragmented the global payments market is by region. Local payment methods such as digital wallets and account-to-account transfers can outweigh cards in certain markets. Neglecting these methods introduces friction at checkout and erodes the market's overall room to grow. Maynard says that failure to support local payment methods will limit the market's overall growth potential.
There is a clear implication here for retailers in markets with strong local rails. In regions where convenience-store payments, carrier billing, or various code-based payments are deeply entrenched, an agent strategy built solely around cards risks leaving sales on the table. When designing agent-driven purchase paths, weaving in a market's dominant payment methods becomes the key to avoiding lost opportunities.
Trust as the Biggest Hurdle
For all the dazzle of the numbers, Juniper Research identifies trust as the single biggest barrier to adoption. The psychological hurdle of handing an AI agent your wallet, and delegating the purchase decision itself, remains high.
For this reason, the report offers a sober view that agentic commerce will not replace traditional eCommerce checkouts for the foreseeable future. The 1.3 billion users and $3.5 trillion projection are best read not as a replacement for existing eCommerce, but as the scale of a new purchasing experience layered on top of it. The pragmatic posture for businesses is to protect existing purchase paths while building out a new agent-facing entry point in parallel.
The wall of trust is, conversely, an opening for early movers. Businesses that prepare agent-ready product data and line up secure payment options early are better positioned to be the ones chosen once consumer comfort catches up.
Conclusion
Juniper Research's forecast shows that agentic commerce is not some "future that will arrive someday," but a market whose scale is taking shape on a five-year horizon. A user base of 1.3 billion, transaction value of $3.5 trillion, and the contest for payment-infrastructure dominance unfolding behind it. Together, these put a concrete, numbers-backed case for why businesses should start preparing now.
What to watch next is how the balance between cards and local payments is struck, and which regions see the wall of trust come down first. The businesses ready to be chosen by agents will be the first to reap the benefits of this growth curve.
