While at the National Retail Federation Big Show in New York City last week, Editor-in-Chief Joe Keenan interviewed Shirley Gao, chief digital and information officer at Pacsun, a purpose-driven, leading specialty retailer, and Sharon Gee, head of AI at Commerce, an open, AI-driven commerce ecosystem and parent company of BigCommerce, Feedonomics, and Makeswift. They discuss Pacsun's use of agentic checkout, the friction points it's solving for within the checkout process, and how Commerce supports Pacsun in these efforts.

As AI agents increasingly influence decisions or execute purchases, new challenges have arisen around payments, trust and authorization. Gao and Gee detail how Pacsun is preparing its checkout infrastructure to handle these issues, including the collaboration needed between payment channels, merchants and data partners to enable seamless AI agent-driven shopping. Lastly, the two leaders share advice and lessons learned for other retailers working to modernize their checkout processes.