JD Sports Fashion plc is beginning to test agentic commerce, allowing shoppers to move from artificial intelligence (AI)-driven product discovery directly to checkout and payment without leaving AI-powered interfaces.

The retailer announced the initiative Jan. 12 at NRF 2026. It connects AI-led shopping interactions to JD Sports’ existing ecommerce infrastructure, including pricing, inventory, fulfillment and payments. The retailer said the effort is to prepare for shopping journeys that increasingly start inside AI tools rather than on traditional websites or mobile apps.

JD Sports is working with Stripe and commercetools on the deployment. Stripe is providing checkout, payment processing and fraud protection through its Agentic Commerce Suite. Meanwhile, commercetools is supplying the commerce layer that connects AI-driven discovery to JD Sports’ governed product data and transaction systems.

JD Sports is No. 28 in the Europe Database. The database tracks Europe’s largest online retailers, ranking them by their annual ecommerce sales and more. In 2024, JD Sports announced its plans to acquire Hibbett Sports, which is U.S.-based. It has since completed the acquisition. Hibbett Sports is No. 294 in the Top 2000 Database, which tracks North America’s largest online retailers, ranking them by their annual ecommerce sales and more.

How JD Sports is approaching agentic commerce

“We want to make it as easy as possible for our customers to shop with us, no matter where they are or how they like to shop,” said Regis Schultz, group CEO of JD Sports, in a statement.

He said the approach allows the retailer to support emerging AI-based entry points without disrupting its existing operations.

Agentic commerce refers to using AI agents or assistants that can surface products, answer questions and initiate purchases on a shopper’s behalf. While many retailers have added AI-powered search and chat features, fewer have connected those tools directly to live checkout and payment flows.

JD Sports said the new setup allows purchases initiated inside AI environments to be completed as standard ecommerce transactions, with orders flowing through the same systems that govern pricing, availability and fulfillment across its business.

Commercetools said its role is to ensure that products presented by AI tools reflect real-time availability and approved pricing. At the same time, Stripe’s technology converts AI-driven purchase intent into secure payments.

“Retailers are reaching an inflection point where discovery is increasingly happening inside AI-driven environments, but transactions still have to be reliable, secure and scalable,” said Dirk Hoerig, founder and chief innovation officer of commercetools.

JD Sports did not disclose a timeline for broader rollout or say which markets will first see the agentic commerce capability in production.

Industry adoption of agentic commerce has been cautious, particularly among large retailers, due to concerns about data accuracy, payments security and operational control. JD Sports said said it designed its approach to extend existing ecommerce systems rather than replace them, allowing AI-driven discovery to feed into established transaction infrastructure.

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