Retailers Prioritize AI Shopping Assistants in Budgets
A PYMNTS Intelligence survey commissioned by Visa Acceptance Solutions found that 37% of 1,185 merchants across the United States, Brazil and the UAE plan to invest in AI shopping assistants during the next three years, making them the most frequently selected digital capability. The same study surveyed 5,841 consumers and found 47% used AI during their most recent online purchase.
A PYMNTS Intelligence report commissioned by Visa Acceptance Solutions found that AI shopping assistants have become the most frequently selected digital capability in merchants' three-year investment plans. Among 1,185 surveyed merchants in the United States, Brazil and the United Arab Emirates, 37% selected AI shopping assistants.
The Global Digital Shopping Index also surveyed 5,841 consumers across the same three markets. It found that 47% of online shoppers used some form of AI during their most recent purchase journey, including product research and comparison, while 64% said they expected to use AI shopping agents within two years.
Investment is shifting, not simply expanding
PYMNTS reports that the rise of AI in merchant plans coincides with less emphasis on several established digital capabilities. Merchant support for cross-channel shopping fell nine percentage points even though consumer demand held steady. Support for stored payment methods also declined while demand increased, and mobile-app investment moved opposite rising consumer demand.
The report does not show that merchants are abandoning those features. Its narrower conclusion is that retailers are becoming more selective about where they put development budgets and personnel. Consumer demand still exceeds merchant availability for several familiar capabilities: price matching showed the largest reported gap, with 61% consumer demand versus 47% merchant availability. Mobile product locators, digital coupons, loyalty programs and free shipping also remained areas where demand exceeded support.
What the findings do and do not establish
The survey is a large, multi-country snapshot, but it is one commissioned study produced by PYMNTS Intelligence for Visa Acceptance Solutions. The percentages should therefore be treated as evidence about the surveyed markets and respondents, not proof of an industry-wide budget shift.
For retail product and data teams, the practical signal is that AI-assisted discovery is competing directly with mature commerce features for finite investment. Building a useful shopping assistant requires reliable product data, retrieval quality and testing of recommendations and conversational flows. The same results also warn against neglecting checkout, price-matching and cross-channel basics that consumers continue to request. Future editions will show whether stated plans translate into deployed assistants and sustained shopper use.
Key Points
- 1AI shopping assistants were the most frequently selected three-year digital investment among surveyed merchants, chosen by 37% of 1,185 respondents.
- 2The same commissioned study surveyed 5,841 consumers and found 47% used AI in their most recent online purchase journey and 64% expected to use shopping agents within two years.
- 3Merchant emphasis on cross-channel shopping, stored payments and mobile apps declined even where consumer demand held steady or rose, indicating budget trade-offs rather than uniform digital expansion.
Scoring Rationale
A large survey across three markets documents merchant investment plans and consumer use of AI-assisted shopping, giving retail product teams a useful directional signal. Because it is a single commissioned study rather than independently replicated market data, the findings remain notable rather than definitive.
Sources
Primary source and supporting public references used for this report.
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