Mastercard's (NYSE:MA) top product executive says shoppers are on the brink of abandoning web browsers for AI concierges that both discover and pay for goods.

What Happened: "We're convinced that we are on the eve of a paradigm shift in commerce," Mastercard’s Chief Product Officer Jorn Lambert told the Fortune Brainstorm Tech crowd last week.

Lambert said consumers already type "best running shoes" into ChatGPT instead of Google and then ask, "Once you've searched and discovered a product you want to buy, it's only natural that you then ask the AI agent to buy it on your behalf."

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To keep that hand-off secure, Mastercard last week rolled out Agent Pay, an "agentic payments" program that registers trusted bots and wraps every transaction in cryptographic tokens.

The timing is strategic. Federal Trade Commission data show fraud losses tied to online shopping hit roughly $750 million in 2024, part of a record $12.5 billion in consumer swindles.

Lambert argues AI agents can out-sniff bogus sellers better than humans by scoring every shipment and credential in milliseconds, potentially flipping commerce's weakest link into its strongest shield.

Now, whether consumers trust a bot with their wallet remains to be seen, but the payments giant is betting that safer, friction-free clicks beat a checkout page every time.

Why It Matters: The Mastercard executive’s comments arrive on the back of OpenAI’s recent unveiling of an upgrade to ChatGPT’s search functionality, enabling users to browse and shop for products directly within the chatbot.

The move comes as OpenAI seeks to challenge Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) dominance in search by offering a more user-centric alternative to Google’s ad-driven results.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates also envisions a future where AI agents shake up the way users shop and search online, rendering the likes of Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Google search obsolete.

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This article Mastercard CFO Says Shoppers Ready To Abandon The Web Browser In Favor Of AI Agents: 'Paradigm Shift' Unfolding originally appeared on Benzinga.com

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