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There is no single worldwide rule that decides who pays when an AI agent places an order. The answer depends on whose agent acted, what authority the person or business granted it, the contracts and payment arrangements involved, the records available, and the law governing the transaction.
One position is clear in current UK consumer guidance: a business remains responsible for what its AI agent does when dealing with customers, even if another company built or supplies that agent. For a consumer’s own shopping or payment agent, responsibility is still unsettled across jurisdictions. Treat the agent’s instructions, limits, confirmations and logs as evidence of what was authorized.
What it means for an AI agent to place an order
An AI agent is software that can pursue a goal by gathering current information, making choices and taking actions. In commerce, its role may stop at recommending a product, or it may continue through product selection, cart creation, checkout and payment. Those are materially different levels of delegation.
Three levels of shopping authority
| Agent role | Typical action | Why the distinction matters |
|---|---|---|
| Advisory | Finds products, compares offers or explains terms | The user still makes the purchase decision and completes the transaction. |
| Checkout preparation | Selects an item, fills a cart or prepares an order for review | The agent influences the transaction but normally needs a human confirmation before submission. |
| Transactional | Submits an order or authorizes payment within delegated limits | The agent’s authority, spending limits and records become central to any dispute. |
Products do not all use these labels or the same workflow. Some require confirmation for a simple shopping action; others can operate within user-defined constraints. When asking who is responsible, first establish exactly which level was enabled.
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The usual order sequence
- The user states a goal, such as finding a replacement part, and sets limits on price, merchants, delivery or timing.
- The agent searches merchant sites or other current information and evaluates available offers.
- It selects an item and offer according to the instructions it interprets.
- It transmits an order, or sends payment details to a merchant or payment service.
- The merchant and payment participants authorize and process the transaction.
- The system produces order confirmations, receipts and other records. A cancellation request, complaint or payment dispute may follow.
This sequence is a useful model, not a guarantee that every agent follows each step. The practical question is whether the agent merely advised, prepared a transaction, or had permission to complete it.
What happens immediately after the agent submits the order
Once an order is transmitted, normal merchant and payment processes generally take over: inventory is reserved, a price and delivery promise are recorded, and a payment authorization may be requested. The agent may no longer be able to undo the transaction automatically. Cancellation and return rights therefore depend on the merchant’s terms and the law that applies to the transaction, not simply on the fact that software made the choice.
Keep the order confirmation, receipt, product page, displayed price, delivery promise and any cancellation instructions. Also preserve the user’s original prompt or settings, the agent’s selected item and the time of each action. If a later dispute does not identify that an agent made the payment, or cannot show what instructions the agent followed, determining authorization becomes harder.
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A UK business using an agent with customers
The clearest current answer comes from the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). Consumer law applies whether a customer interacts with a person or an AI agent. The business is responsible for what its agent does in the same way it is responsible for an employee’s conduct. That responsibility does not disappear when a different company designed, trained or operates the system.
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The CMA states: “Ultimately, you will be responsible if an AI agent does something illegal, so it is important that you think about compliance with consumer law from the start.” A business should therefore check an agent before deployment and continue checking it in operation.
The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 defines a commercial practice to include acts or omissions by a trader, or by a person acting in the trader’s name or on its behalf for business purposes. It also prohibits unfair commercial practices. This statutory context supports the CMA’s explanation for UK consumer dealings; it is not a universal rule for every country or for every transaction made by a consumer’s personal assistant.
What UK businesses are expected to do
- Train and test the agent against consumer-law obligations before allowing customer-facing actions.
- Monitor real-world answers, transactions, complaints and errors, then correct unsafe behaviour.
- Make sure the agent respects statutory and contractual rights, including cancellation rights where they apply.
- Avoid misleading statements or omissions and obtain consent required by consumer law.
- Assess a third-party provider’s compliance work rather than assuming procurement transfers legal responsibility.
For UK consumer-protection breaches, the CMA describes possible enforcement action, fines of up to 10% of worldwide turnover and possible compensation for affected consumers. Those are potential consequences in an applicable case, not an automatic penalty for every agent mistake.
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The position is less settled when an individual authorizes a separate agent to shop or pay and the agent buys the wrong item, exceeds a limit or acts without valid authority. Australian payment stakeholders, the Bank for International Settlements and U.S. Federal Reserve commentary all identify uncertainty about allocating losses in these disputes. None supplies one rule that applies worldwide.
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The outcome can turn on several facts:
- The instruction: What did the user actually ask the agent to do, and were price, merchant, product, quantity or time limits clear?
- The agent’s conduct: Did it stay within those limits, or did it interpret them too broadly?
- The operator: Who provided, configured and controlled the agent?
- The transaction agreements: What did the merchant, card issuer, bank and payment service agree to?
- The evidence: Are the prompt, approval, identity, timestamp and transaction logs reliable?
- The governing law: Which country’s consumer, contract and payment rules apply?
A payment dispute may be especially difficult if the merchant and payment participants cannot identify that an agent initiated the transaction or cannot retrieve the instructions it used. That is a reported concern, not a finding that any particular transaction is unauthorized.
Business-to-business transactions
Higher-value business transactions can magnify the cost of an agent’s error or unauthorized action. Federal Reserve Governor Christopher J. Waller framed the issue this way in a 28 September 2026 speech: “Liability in this context comes down to a pretty simple question: Who is on the hook if an agent makes the wrong purchase?” His question highlights an unresolved allocation problem rather than announcing a new liability rule.
Merchants, issuers and payment services
These participants may have separate contractual and regulatory duties, but the available authorities do not establish a universal rule assigning them every loss caused by an agent. Their records can still determine whether a payment was authenticated, whether an instruction existed, and which party must investigate. The result may differ between a card transaction, a bank transfer and another payment method.
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Authority is not all-or-nothing. A user might permit an agent to spend up to a stated amount, buy only from named merchants, select a specific model, or act during a defined period. An agent that buys a different product at a higher price presents a different question from one that follows every limit but encounters a later delivery problem.
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Inside the stated limits
If the agent selects an item and price that fit the recorded instructions, the user may have a harder argument that the purchase was unauthorized. The precise effect still depends on the applicable law and contracts, but a clear delegation is important evidence.
Outside the stated limits
An agent that ignores a spending cap, adds products, chooses a prohibited merchant or acts after its authority expired may have exceeded its delegation. Preserve the limit and the event log; those records help a merchant or payment provider assess the complaint.
No meaningful authorization
If the agent acted without the user’s approval, after credentials were compromised, or because of a system failure, the issue may be treated differently from a mistaken but authorized choice. Payment rules and jurisdiction determine what notice, investigation and reimbursement process applies.
Safeguards before allowing an agent to buy
Controls for businesses
- Define the products, merchants, prices, quantities and time windows the agent may use.
- Require a meaningful human confirmation for high-value, unusual or out-of-scope transactions.
- Display that an agent is acting and identify the business responsible for the interaction.
- Log the customer’s instruction, the data considered, the decision, the confirmation and the final order.
- Test edge cases such as ambiguous wording, conflicting promotions, unavailable stock and cancellation requests.
- Review complaints and near misses, and suspend or narrow the agent when monitoring reveals unsafe behaviour.
- Require suppliers to explain their controls and incident process; do not treat a vendor contract as a transfer of consumer-law responsibility.
Controls for consumers
- Set a maximum spend and restrict merchants, categories, quantities and delivery locations.
- Use confirmation for first-time merchants, subscriptions, high-value items and purchases that cannot easily be returned.
- Keep a copy of the instruction and the agent’s activity history.
- Use a payment method whose dispute and notification process you understand.
- Review receipts promptly so an unexpected order can be challenged before dispatch where possible.
If the agent places the wrong order
- Stop further actions. Disable the agent, revoke its payment token or narrow its permissions so it cannot repeat the purchase.
- Preserve evidence. Save the prompt, limits, confirmation screen, agent log, order number, receipt, merchant terms and timestamps.
- Contact the merchant quickly. Ask whether the order can be cancelled, amended or returned, and keep the written response.
- Notify the payment provider. Explain that an AI agent initiated the transaction and provide the authorization records. Follow the provider’s stated dispute deadline.
- Identify the legal route. Determine whether the issue is a change-of-mind cancellation, a defective or misdescribed product, an agent acting outside authority, or an unauthorized payment. Different rules may apply.
- Escalate with complete records. If the merchant or payment provider rejects the complaint, use the applicable ombudsman, regulator, court or consumer-redress process for the transaction’s jurisdiction.
Do not describe an order as unauthorized merely because the agent chose an option the user dislikes. The distinction between an authorized but mistaken selection and an action outside the delegated authority can affect the available remedy.
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A framework for comparing real agent deployments
There are no two settled legal products or liability regimes to rank. When evaluating an agent, use the following questions instead.
| Comparison point | Questions to ask |
|---|---|
| Authority | Does the agent advise, prepare checkout or submit payment? |
| Limits | Can you set spending, merchant, product, quantity and time restrictions? |
| Confirmation | Is a human approval required for consequential or unusual orders? |
| Identity | Will the merchant and payment service know that an agent acted? |
| Records | Can you retrieve the instruction, decision, approval and transaction timestamps? |
| Redress | Is there a clear cancellation, complaint and payment-dispute process? |
| Scope | Is the transaction consumer or business-to-business, and which jurisdiction governs it? |
Where payment standards are heading
Payment-industry work is beginning to address delegated intent, authority, agent identity and secure records. EMVCo released a framework for secure, interoperable card-based agentic payments for feedback on 1 September 2026. It was a draft, not a final standard and not a universal liability rule.
The Bank for International Settlements and the Reserve Bank of Australia have highlighted the practical difficulty of detecting agent-initiated payments and resolving disputes when records are incomplete. Their observations explain why identification and audit trails are as important as spending limits. Future standards may improve interoperability, but they do not replace the law, contracts and facts governing an individual dispute.
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The practical answer
When an AI agent places an order, the transaction usually proceeds as an ordinary merchant and payment event, with the added question of what the agent was authorized to do. A UK business cannot generally avoid consumer-law responsibility by saying that its software or a supplier made the decision. For a consumer’s own agent, no global rule decides the loss automatically. Clear limits, meaningful confirmation, visible agent identity and complete records give the parties the best chance of determining what happened and resolving the complaint.
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