DHL Report Finds Nearly a Third Accept AI Purchases

DHL eCommerce's E-Commerce Trends Report 2026, which surveyed 29,000 consumers and 5,800 businesses across 29 countries, found that 29% of shoppers would be willing to let artificial intelligence make purchasing decisions or complete purchases for them within the next five years. The report breaks that down to 33% among Gen Z and 36% among millennials. It also reports that nearly two-thirds of businesses expect shoppers to browse and buy through virtual assistants, and that 73% expect to use generative AI more over the next five years, even as consumers cite privacy and trust concerns. DHL eCommerce CEO Pablo Ciano is quoted saying the ability to understand and respond to customer needs has always defined success, but that AI is now "redefining that advantage at hyperspeed."

On purchase friction, the report says 62% of consumers would abandon a purchase if their preferred payment method was unavailable, while fewer businesses recognize payment choice as a major cause of basket abandonment. It also notes growing interest in delivery flexibility and out-of-home pickup, and in resale and sustainability, with sizable shares of consumers selling on marketplaces and buying second-hand.

A 29% willingness across a large multi-country survey indicates meaningful openness rather than ubiquity. Teams building AI buying agents must reconcile autonomous decision-making with existing checkout, payment, and returns infrastructure. Industry-pattern observations suggest that integrating payment choice, delivery options, and marketplace flows is commonly the gating factor for deploying automated purchase flows in production.

For e-commerce product and ML teams, the reported willingness signals an early-adopter segment that could justify pilots for recommendation-to-purchase agent features. As with prior convenience waves such as one-click buy and saved payment tokens, consumer willingness often precedes merchant readiness on payments and fulfilment, creating friction that slows real-world benefit.

• •Merchant instrumentation of payment options and out-of-home delivery coverage.
• •Changes in cart-abandonment metrics tied to payment availability.
• •A/B tests moving from personalized recommendations to permissioned autonomous purchases, plus consent, transparency, and dispute-resolution norms for agent-driven buying.