Shopify has added new rules to the millions of merchant websites it powers, requiring that purchases made by agentic AI platforms aren’t completed without a “final human review.”
While agentic AI — platforms that employ AI systems to perform tasks like shopping autonomously on behalf of consumers — is still relatively nascent, the space is evolving quickly. Thousands of different agentic applications are currently being developed, including by generative AI vanguard OpenAI. Not to be left behind, payments providers including Visa, Mastercard and PayPal have been quick to launch integrations that can be used by these platforms to facilitate autonomous payments.
But Shopify apparently is not a fan of the idea, at least when humans aren’t involved in the final step. New rules in the platform’s Robot & Agent Policy now clearly specify that “checkouts are for humans. Automated scraping, ‘buy-for-me’ agents or any end-to-end flow that permits payment without a final human review step is not permitted.” Instead, the policy states that “legitimate integrators” should use Shopify’s official checkout kit. Rules like this in a platform’s software code aren’t legally binding, although developers and bots are typically expected to follow these policies.
Shopify Engineer Ilya Grigorik clarified the new rules, saying in an X post that “this change doesn’t add or remove any rules for bots or agents. All we added is a comment for curious humans, with a pointer to http://shopify.com/checkout-kit for native integration that delivers a full-featured checkout experience.”
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Shopify has a tendency to be wary of allowing external players into its sandbox. The platform initially vehemently resisted Amazon’s Buy with Prime feature — a plug-in that lets Amazon sellers offer Prime fulfillment and delivery benefits from their own DTC websites — telling its merchants that using Buy with Prime violated the Shopify terms of service. Shopify did, however, eventually back down on that one.
Retaining control of the payment moment is critically important to Shopify’s bottom line. Nearly 75% of Shopify’s $8.9 billion in revenue last year came from add-on services, primarily payment processing fees, according to The Information.
