Artificial intelligence is making it easier for retailers to get discovered. It is doing considerably less to help them get paid.

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Data in the October 2026 edition of the Consumer AI Benchmark Report from PYMNTS Intelligence reveals that nearly 45% of consumers who use AI for shopping have purchased from an online store they had never used before. Another 40% say AI has changed where they shop.

But despite all that, Amazon still captures nearly 60% of consumers’ most recent AI-assisted purchases. That disconnect reveals an emerging fault line in digital commerce.

AI can introduce consumers to merchants they might never have encountered through traditional search. But when it comes time to transact, shoppers often return to platforms where their payment credentials, delivery expectations and purchase protections are already established.

For retailers and payments providers, the opportunity isn’t simply to make more products discoverable by AI. It’s to make the resulting transaction compelling enough to pull consumers away from the marketplaces they already trust.

After all, while dominant marketplaces benefited for years from controlling both product discovery and checkout, artificial intelligence is beginning to break apart those activities. An AI commerce assistant can compare products across merchants, recommend unfamiliar brands and help shoppers evaluate alternatives without requiring them to visit a marketplace first.

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