NRF 2026: A landmark unveiling for Agentic Commerce
The annual NRF (National Retail Federation) conference is underway with a spotlight on Agentic Commerce, a framework that blends AI-assisted discovery with real-time shopping. Commercetools is taking a leading role by presenting updates to its Agentic Commerce Suite (ACS) and demonstrating how retailers can stay discoverable and shoppable in an increasingly AI-driven marketplace. The event marks a pivotal shift from traditional e-commerce to a more interactive, AI-assisted shopping journey that adapts to consumer intent in real time.
Stripe ACS: A deeper integration for secure, AI-enabled checkout
A central theme at NRF 2026 is the ongoing collaboration with Stripe to advance ACS—Adaptive Checkout and Security. The partnership focuses on reducing friction while preserving security for AI-assisted shopping experiences. Retailers can now leverage Stripe’s authentication workflows within the ACS to ensure that customer sessions steward discovery, recommendations, and purchasing actions without sacrificing performance. Early adopters report that AI-driven discovery powered by ACS scales across channels, delivering consistent payment experiences and reducing drop-offs during the critical checkout phase.
What this means for enterprise teams
For enterprise teams, the Stripe ACS updates mean a smoother bridge between AI agents and payment processing. Merchants can deploy AI assistants that guide customers from initial search to payment, while back-end controls ensure risk rules, MFA prompts, and fraud detection stay in lockstep with the AI’s decisions. This reduces the complexity of cross-system orchestration and helps large retailers deploy consistent, compliant experiences at scale.
AI Hub: A centralized brain for commerce decisioning
Another major feature highlighted at NRF 2026 is the AI Hub, a centralized platform where AI models, prompts, and policy controls live. The AI Hub acts as a governance layer that curates discovery prompts, product recommendations, and customer support tooling. For retailers, this translates into faster experiment cycles, safer model updates, and a cohesive customer experience across websites, apps, and voice-enabled storefronts. The AI Hub is designed to be agnostic to the underlying AI providers, enabling enterprises to mix and match services while preserving brand voice and policy compliance.
How the AI Hub fuels personalized discovery
With AI agents acting as digital storefronts, the AI Hub enables nuanced personalization without foregoing transparency. Merchants can define intents, contexts, and guardrails that steer AI-driven recommendations toward ethical and brand-aligned outcomes. In practice, this means customers see more relevant products, smarter search results, and intuitive navigation—all while data governance remains front and center.
JD Sports signs on: A landmark first retailer for ACS-enabled discovery
In what organizers call a landmark moment, JD Sports has signed on as the first retailer to use the ACS to connect AI-driven discovery through large language models and AI assistants. This early adopter demonstrates how a retailer with a large product catalog and dynamic promotions can harness AI-powered discovery to surface the right items at the right moment. By integrating AI-assisted search with shoppable content, JD Sports aims to shorten the path from curiosity to checkout, enhancing conversion while maintaining brand integrity.
Staying discoverable and shoppable in agentic commerce
Beyond the headline partnerships, the NRF demonstrations emphasize practical outcomes: improved product discoverability, smarter merchandising, and consistent, shoppable experiences across touchpoints. Agentic Commerce is designed to help enterprises stay visible in crowded digital environments, ensuring that intent signals—from voice queries to on-site browsing—translate into meaningful interactions and revenue. The combination of ACS, Stripe’s secure checkout, and the AI Hub provides retailers with a unified toolkit for orchestrating intelligent, compliant commerce at scale.
What to watch as NRF 2026 unfolds
As the conference progresses, expect case studies that detail the integration journey, implementation timelines, and measurable outcomes. Retailers will be watching for improvements in discovery-to-conversion velocity, cart size optimization, and the efficiency gains from centralized AI governance. The industry is watching how Agentic Commerce will evolve—balancing powerful AI capabilities with customer trust, data privacy, and security—while helping brands stay discoverable and truly shoppable in an increasingly AI-enabled marketplace.
