Debenhams is piloting agentic AI commerce via PayPal integration to reduce mobile friction and help solve a familiar problem for retailers.
Mobile checkout abandonment remains a persistent revenue leak for digital retailers. Debenhams Group is attempting to close this gap by deploying an agentic AI interface within the PayPal app. The pilot makes Debenhams the first UK retailer to test an automated checkout flow that keeps the user entirely inside a payment provider’s ecosystem.
Shoppers using PayPal can now issue natural language prompts to find items from Debenhams Group’s brands, including boohoo, boohooMAN, Karen Millen, and PrettyLittleThing. The system bypasses standard keyword search. Instead, an agentic assistant scans the shopper’s profile to align recommendations with their budget and preferences.
The agentic assistant will ask follow-up questions to narrow down options and locate relevant stock. Once a user selects a product, the transaction occurs within the chat window. The backend automatically applies saved account credentials for delivery and payment, which removes the need to redirect customers to a separate mobile site or app.
Business drivers for agentic AI in commerce
The rationale follows transaction volume. Debenhams Group processes 16 percent of its sales through PayPal. Placing inventory discovery in a channel where a large segment of the customer base already operates allows the retailer to compress the sales funnel.
Debenhams and PayPal co-developed the agentic AI project. While current testing focuses on select US customers, a wider release in both the US and UK is planned for later this year. In the US, the system also integrates with external tools such as Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot.
Dan Finley, CEO of Debenhams Group, said: “At Debenhams Group, our goal is to help customers discover and be inspired by new products and brands, while making shopping as easy and enjoyable as possible. This kind of innovation has the potential to fundamentally transform online retail; in a way we haven’t seen since the shift to mobile shopping.”
Finley added that the group is “proud to be the first UK retailer to partner with PayPal on this experience, bringing a faster, more intuitive way to shop to customers across our brands.”
How Debenhams is integrating wider AI infrastructure
The group recently partnered with Peak AI to improve forecasting across stock, sales, and pricing. An effective agentic AI deployment in commerce requires real-time inventory and pricing visibility to function without error. The Peak AI partnership indicates the group is establishing the data lineage needed to support automated interactions.
Simultaneously, the company launched the Debenhams Group AI Skills Academy to train employees in applied AI, ensuring internal teams can manage these workflows.
Mike Edmonds, VP of Agentic Commerce at PayPal, commented: “With agentic commerce, shopping becomes a conversation, not a search. By embedding AI-powered discovery and checkout directly into the PayPal app, we’re helping customers move seamlessly from inspiration to purchase, while giving retailers like Debenhams Group a powerful new way to engage shoppers at scale.”
This agentic AI commerce deployment tests whether third-party platforms can capture high-intent traffic better than proprietary apps. Debenhams is positioning inventory where liquidity exists rather than forcing traffic to its own storefronts.
Integrating discovery and payment into a single workflow reduces the steps between marketing and settlement. Success will depend on data accuracy and the ability of the agent to interpret queries without hallucination.
See also: URBN tests agentic AI to automate retail reporting
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