Agents Are the New Users: What It Takes for AI to Shop for Us | Shopify's Rohit Mishra

What happens when AI doesn’t just recommend what to buy, but makes the purchase? And what has to change in payments, data and fraud prevention before people trust it to?

In this episode of The London Fintech Podcast, Tony Clark is joined by Rohit Mishra, VP of Product at Shopify, where he leads payments, tax, risk and cross-border, to explore how AI agents are changing the way people shop and pay.

Rohit explains why Shopify now treats agents as a new kind of user. He describes how shoppers are moving from asking AI for recommendations to letting it build baskets and complete purchases, and why, on Shopify’s data, shopping sessions that start with an AI agent convert better than those from traditional search. He also sets out the work underway on industry standards such as the Universal Commerce Protocol, and what merchants need for agents to find and buy their products, from agent-ready product data to familiar checkout wallets.

The conversation also looks at the open questions: who is liable when an agent’s purchase goes wrong, how agentic tokens aim to keep card details secure while preserving consumer protections, and how bad actors are using the same technology, with small businesses the most exposed to fraud.

Rohit closes with advice for financial institutions: plan for a future in which customers are represented by agents, and look for the opportunity rather than only the risk.

For anyone in payments, retail or financial services, this is a practical look at what’s already happening in agentic commerce, what’s still unresolved, and how to prepare.

00:00 Trailer & Intro

01:18 AI That Buys, Not Just Recommends

02:07 What Shopify Covers Today

05:32 Agents Are the New Users

07:49 Writing the Rules for Agent Shopping

12:11 What the Data Shows

15:35 Where Friction Remains

19:04 How Trust Gets Built

24:17 Making It Work: Catalogue, Checkout and Wallet

32:10 Why Small Businesses Could Win

33:59 What's Next: Shop Pay in Agents and Agentic Tokens

38:12 When Bad Actors Use AI Too

42:49 Who's Liable When an Agent Buys?

44:55 Agentic Tokens Explained

48:29 What This Means for Financial Services

53:09 Overestimating Risk, Underestimating Opportunity

54:38 Career Lessons and Life Outside Work