PayPal's Agentic Commerce: How is it Preparing for This Revolution?

Perplexity, along with its key partner PayPal PYPL, recently announced the launch of an agentic shopping product for U.S. users, just in time for the holiday shopping surge. Per a CNBC report, the new app will be available for free download next week.

Through Perplexity’s search engine, consumers will be able to purchase items directly from more than 5,000 merchants. The product is designed to better recognize when consumers are shopping and deliver more personalized results by leveraging insights from their past searches.

Agentic commerce is a new wave in online shopping, where advanced AI agents act on behalf of consumers to discover, compare and purchase products. These intelligent agents anticipate consumer needs, tailor recommendations, automate transactions, and even negotiate deals across multiple platforms to create a smooth, frictionless shopping experience.

To lead this new era of AI-powered commerce, PayPal launched its agentic commerce services last month. It is a comprehensive suite of solutions that enable merchants to attract customers for AI-driven shopping. PayPal leverages its network of more than 400 million active accounts and presence in over 200 markets to scale this new commerce model globally.

PayPal's agentic commerce ecosystem involves collaborations with leading AI and e-commerce companies like OpenAI, Google Cloud, Wix, Cymbio, Commerce (which encompasses BigCommerce and Feedonomics) and Shopware, to provide scalable, secure, and user-friendly AI e-commerce experiences for merchants and consumers worldwide.

How Are Mastercard and Shopify Doing in the Agentic Commerce Space?

Mastercard MA introduced the Mastercard Agent Pay program in September 2025, enabling U.S. cardholders to shop online using AI agents securely and seamlessly. It collaborates with Stripe and Google to build agentic commerce infrastructure and standards. MA developed "Insight Tokens" to offer personalized, secure consumer experiences within agentic commerce, leading the way in trusted AI-driven commerce.

Shopify SHOP launched its Commerce Assistant Agent framework in mid-2025, allowing developers to embed AI-powered agents into Shopify workflows for tasks like merchandising and customer support. Integrated with OpenAI and Stripe’s Agentic Commerce Protocol, customers can buy directly via AI chats like ChatGPT, enjoying smooth, in-chat checkout experiences.

PYPL’s Price Performance, Valuation & Estimates

Shares of PayPal have declined 29.3% year to date, underperforming both the broader industry and the S&P 500 Index.

From a valuation standpoint, PayPal shares are trading cheaply, as suggested by the Value Score of A. In terms of forward 12-month P/E, PYPL stock is trading at 10.37X, which is at a significant discount to the Zacks Financial Transaction Services industry’s 19.74X.

PayPal’s estimate revisions reflect a positive trend. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for full-year 2025 EPS has been revised upward over the past month. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2025 EPS suggests 14.8% growth year over year.

PayPal currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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