Shoppers Express Interest in Agentic AI but Cite Major Concerns

Retail Times reports that PayPal released research, conducted by Logica Research, measuring consumer attitudes toward agentic AI in shopping. The survey sampled 1,000 UK online shoppers and a further 2,000 respondents across the US and Australia, per Retail Times. The findings include 64% of UK consumers expressing interest in trying agentic shopping tools, 21% of UK shoppers already using AI tools for shopping today, and 70% wanting AI assistance in the future, according to the Logica Research data cited by Retail Times. The study also reports that 62% of consumers who do not yet use AI plan to try AI-powered shopping tools within the next year, per Retail Times.

Editorial analysis - technical context: Agentic shopping tools are described in the study as AI assistants that can research products, compare options and make purchases on a shopper's behalf. The survey highlights feature expectations that matter to adoption: price discovery and promotion aggregation were primary motivators, with 31% citing finding the best price and 28% wanting help finding promotions, Retail Times reports. Security and transaction guarantees are prominent technical requirements, with 83% of respondents expecting payment security equal to or better than existing methods.

The survey frames consumer demand for *assistive* AI that reduces friction while keeping control and trust central. Reported barriers include fears of unauthorized purchases (43%), bank-account security breaches (39%), incorrect purchases (32%) and privacy or data breaches (29%), per Retail Times citing Logica Research. For e-commerce product teams, payments providers and trust-and-safety engineers, those numbers underline that convenience alone may not drive agentic-AI adoption without demonstrable security and transparency features.

• •Adoption metrics: whether the reported 62% of non-users who plan to try AI convert into active users over the next 12 months (Retail Times).
• •Payment guarantees: announcements from payment providers or merchants offering escrow, authorization controls, or transaction-reversal workflows tied to agentic flows.
• •Transparency tooling: deployments of explainability, consent-granularity, or human-in-the-loop confirmation UI elements in commerce AI.

Editorial analysis: Overall, the Logica Research survey reported by Retail Times indicates strong consumer curiosity about agentic shopping paired with concrete trust and security requirements. Practitioners building commerce-facing agents will likely need to prioritize verifiable payment safety, clear consent flows, and reliable product-matching to move interest toward sustained usage.