Seventy-two percent of Brazilian consumers have tried an AI shopping agent or say they would use one, up from 39% a year earlier, according to the second Agentic Commerce Report from Global Payments, which Brazilian outlets reported on October 14. Only China, at 86%, scored higher among the seven markets surveyed. The figure measures stated willingness in a survey, not purchases, and a disclosure from DoorDash, reported by TechCrunch on October 30, shows how far real use can lag: the delivery company said it had received only “several hundred” orders from outside AI agents.

What the survey measured

Startups says the research was run by The Lantern, a market research firm, a name that Global Payments’ own press release also gives. Startups and Mercado & Consumo, both citing the report, say it polled 8,027 consumers in seven markets in May 2026: the United States, United Kingdom, France, Brazil, China, Singapore and Australia. The first edition polled about 8,000 people in the same markets in August and September 2025, which is the baseline for the year-on-year comparison, according to Startups and to Global Payments’ own September 23 press release.

Startups defines agentic commerce as a mode of shopping in which an AI agent searches for, evaluates and buys products on the consumer’s behalf. Participants were shown a description of an agent able to search, select and buy for them and were then asked about their willingness to use it, according to the outlet.

The coverage leaves some basics open. Mercado & Consumo’s article does not give the sample size per country, the margin of error, the exact wording of the questions or the 2025 method. Global Payments’ English-language release, as reproduced on Finviz, gives headline and U.S. figures but no breakdown for Brazil.

Brazil against six other markets

The 72% for Brazil combines two groups. Meio & Mensagem and Mercado & Consumo report that 24% of Brazilians have already tried an agent and 48% say they would use one now or within the next 12 months. The gain of 33 percentage points was the largest among the markets on the comparable measure, Meio & Mensagem says.

The ranking of consumers who have tried or would consider delegating purchases, as reported by Startups, Meio & Mensagem and Mercado & Consumo, is China at 86%, Brazil 72%, Singapore 59%, the United Kingdom 48%, France 46%, the United States 45% and Australia 40%. Startups reports other year-on-year gains of 22 points in China, 21 in France and 18 in the United Kingdom, and does not give 2025 figures for Singapore, the United States or Australia.

Trust moved in the same direction. Brazilians rated their confidence in a personal AI agent at an average of 3.80 on a scale of 1 to 5, up from 3.18 in 2025, the second-highest score after China’s 3.97, according to Startups and Meio & Mensagem.

Startups headlines the result as Brazil leading agentic commerce in the West. That wording reflects the ranking once China is set aside: Brazil sits ahead of Singapore and the four Western markets in the survey. It describes attitudes, not the volume of agent-driven sales.

What worries Brazilian shoppers

Concerns follow a familiar pattern. Startups reports that 50% of Brazilian respondents worry about the security of payment data, 45% about privacy and the use of personal data, 41% about the AI making a wrong choice and 36% about who would be responsible if something went wrong.

Global Payments’ English release reports the same top worry among Americans, with 50% concerned about protecting payment details. Juan Pablo D’Antiochia, the company’s general manager of Enterprise for Latin America, told Startups that people want convenience but also want to stay in control, especially at the moment of payment, and that security, transparency and control will decide whether the technology moves on to higher-value purchases.

The five-year outlook, and a figure that does not match

Across the seven markets, consumers estimate that AI agents will account for 17% of their purchases within five years, according to Startups, Meio & Mensagem and Mercado & Consumo. For comparison they put physical stores at 18%, brand websites at 13%, search engines at 12% and marketplaces at 12%. The 17% is an average of the seven countries, and the coverage gives no separate figure for Brazil.

Global Payments’ own press release, dated September 23, gives a different headline: consumers expect AI to make 15% of their purchases within five years, up from 9% a year earlier. The sources reviewed do not explain the gap between 15% and 17%. It may reflect a different cut of the data, but that is not stated, so both figures are reported here with their sources.

Cindy Turner, Global Payments’ chief product officer, said in the release that the idea of letting AI buy something felt futuristic only a year ago and that consumers are increasingly willing to hand over everyday purchases if it saves them time.

A very different number from DoorDash

TechCrunch reported on October 30 that DoorDash told investors on its third-quarter earnings call that it has received only “several hundred” orders from third-party AI agents, naming agents such as Muse and Instinct. For scale, TechCrunch points to DoorDash’s 2025 report, which says it completes an average of 3 million deliveries a day.

Chief executive Tony Xu, answering an analyst’s question, called agent ordering a very dynamic area and said the company does not want to be unrealistic about it: “you don’t want to be delusional.” Most customers still order through DoorDash’s own app, TechCrunch says, and Xu said the company wants to learn more about agent use cases and build relationships with agent makers. He added that DoorDash could eventually advertise inside those agents.

DoorDash is also building its own agent tools, according to the same report: a chatbot called Ask DoorDash in June 2026, a command-line agent in July, a text-to-order agent in September, and a connector based on the Model Context Protocol, or MCP, that lets people order from other chatbots and is aimed at corporate ordering.

Retailers split on letting agents in

Whether agents can shop at all depends on the merchant. TechCrunch reported on October 21 that Walmart announced an Agent Gateway, an MCP server through which approved agents can search its inventory and buy for a customer, and Agent Profiles due next month. Each agent would get its own profile, and customers could require approval for each transaction or pre-authorize purchases up to a spending limit. Walmart compares it to adding an authorized user to a credit card, and agents that break its terms will be blocked.

John Furner, Walmart’s chief executive, said the company is preparing for a future in which agents are mainstream, according to TechCrunch. The same article says Amazon has begun blocking AI agents from making purchases for shoppers, and that Walmart had already partnered with Meta’s Muse agent and offers integrations with ChatGPT and Gemini.

Payment networks in Latin America are also testing the idea. DPL News reported in June that Getnet, Neivor and Mastercard completed what it called the first agent-initiated payment accepted and processed locally in Mexico, using Mastercard Agent Pay and a Santander card. The article does not give the amount or the merchant.

How to read the gap

Lens analysis: the survey and the DoorDash disclosure measure different things in different places and cannot be set against each other directly. The survey asked about a described product in seven countries, and most of Brazil’s 72% is people who say they would try an agent, not people who have. DoorDash counted real orders from outside agents on a single platform at one moment.

Taken together, they suggest that consumer interest, at least as stated, is running ahead of the infrastructure that would turn it into purchases. The merchants and payment systems that decide whether agents can transact, and on what terms, are still setting their rules, as the Walmart and Amazon positions show. Brazil’s numbers show an open audience, which is not the same as a working market.

Two things would test this. One is whether Brazilian merchants and payment providers open their systems to agents the way Walmart is starting to do, and the sources reviewed report no such announcement. The other is the next edition of the Global Payments survey, which would show whether stated willingness holds as more consumers actually try the tools.

Sources

Image: Shopping online with bank card.jpg by Bogdan Hoyaux / European Commission, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Illustrative photo; it does not show the events described.