TL;DR

Debenhams Group is piloting an agentic AI shopping experience inside the PayPal app, becoming the first UK retailer to test automated checkout that keeps users entirely within a payment provider’s ecosystem. Shoppers can find and buy products from brands including boohoo, Karen Millen, and PrettyLittleThing through natural language conversation.

How it works

PayPal users can issue natural language prompts to find items from Debenhams Group’s brands. Rather than standard keyword search, an agentic assistant scans the shopper’s profile to match recommendations with their budget and preferences, asks follow-up questions to narrow options, and completes the transaction within the chat window using saved payment and delivery credentials.

The approach eliminates the redirect to a separate mobile site or app — a point where retailers typically lose customers. Debenhams processes 16% of its sales through PayPal, making the platform a natural channel for reducing cart abandonment.

Current testing focuses on select US customers, with a wider release in both the US and UK planned for later this year.

Building the infrastructure

The pilot sits within a broader AI investment programme. Debenhams Group recently partnered with Peak AI to improve forecasting across stock, sales, and pricing — a prerequisite for agentic commerce, which needs real-time inventory and pricing data to function without errors.

The company has also launched an AI Skills Academy to train employees in applied AI, ensuring internal teams can manage these automated workflows.

Dan Finley, Debenhams Group CEO, said the innovation “has the potential to fundamentally transform online retail in a way we haven’t seen since the shift to mobile shopping.”

Looking forward

The pilot tests whether third-party payment platforms can capture high-intent shopping traffic more effectively than retailers’ own apps. If successful, it could reshape how UK retailers think about sales channels — positioning inventory where customer liquidity already exists rather than driving traffic to proprietary storefronts.