83% of Egyptian Businesses Plan Agentic Commerce Investment Within Two Years, Visa Study Finds
More than 83% of Egyptian organizations surveyed plan to invest in agentic commerce over the next two years, even as nearly three-quarters of business leaders say they are still unfamiliar with the concept, highlighting a striking gap between awareness and investment appetite around the next wave of AI-powered commerce.
The findings come from The State of Agentic Commerce in the Middle East, a study conducted by Fast Company Middle East’s research and intelligence arm Probity in partnership with Visa, surveying 750 C-suite executives and senior leaders across Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
The research focused on retail, consumer products, travel and hospitality, and banking and financial services, examining how businesses are preparing for a model in which AI agents can increasingly act, make decisions and conduct transactions based on user preferences and real-time information.
Businesses are interested before they fully understand the technology
Egypt presents one of the study’s clearest contradictions.
Around 55.7% of Egyptian respondents said they were interested or very interested in emerging commerce technologies such as AI-powered personalization and autonomous transactions.
Yet almost three-quarters remain unfamiliar with agentic commerce itself.
Only 27.2% of Egyptian executives said they were quite or very familiar with the concept, compared with 29.4% in the UAE and 23.7% in Saudi Arabia.
The numbers suggest that interest in AI-powered commerce is developing faster than detailed understanding of how autonomous agents will work in practice.
That distinction matters because agentic commerce represents a significant step beyond the AI tools businesses have spent the past several years adopting.
Rather than simply generating recommendations or assisting users, AI agents can potentially perform parts of the commercial journey on their behalf, from identifying suitable products and services to taking actions and eventually completing transactions within predefined permissions.
Some Egyptian companies are already preparing pilots
Despite the awareness gap, a segment of the Egyptian market is moving beyond exploration.
Around 16.1% of organizations surveyed in Egypt plan to launch an agentic commerce pilot within the next six months, compared with 11.7% in the UAE.
Saudi Arabia appears considerably further ahead on that measure, with more than 43% of respondents planning pilots within the same period.
The expected business case also differs between markets.
Egyptian and Saudi organizations identify revenue growth as the leading expected benefit from agentic commerce, while UAE businesses place greater emphasis on customer loyalty and retention.
The findings indicate that companies are approaching autonomous commerce primarily as a growth and customer-experience opportunity rather than simply another way to reduce operating costs.
“We are seeing early but meaningful signs of a shift in Egypt as businesses start to embrace agentic commerce to unlock the next level of value,” said Malak El Baba, Country Manager at Visa Egypt.
“At Visa, we view this as the next step in seamless transactions. While commerce becomes more intelligent and autonomous, our role is to keep payments frictionless, inclusive, and secure.”
Investment plans are beginning to take shape
The study suggests that Egyptian businesses are generally approaching the technology cautiously when it comes to capital commitments.
Most organizations planning investments favor spending between $250,000 and $500,000, while around 9% of Egyptian respondents are considering strategic investments exceeding $1 million.
That compares with approximately 17% in the UAE and 10% in Saudi Arabia planning investments above the $1 million threshold.
UAE companies showed a more even split between investments of $250,000–$500,000 and larger commitments of $500,000–$1 million.
The investment intentions suggest that agentic commerce is beginning to move into corporate technology budgets even before the market has developed a broadly shared understanding of how it will ultimately be deployed.
Security and trust matter more than access to technology
The biggest obstacles identified by executives are also revealing.
Data privacy and security emerged as the leading concern across the markets surveyed, followed by uncertainty over return on investment and regulatory risk.
Skills and access to technology ranked lower among the barriers.
That suggests the main challenge facing agentic commerce may not be whether companies can build or obtain AI agents, but whether businesses and customers can trust those agents with increasingly consequential decisions and transactions.
The question becomes particularly important when AI moves from recommending what a customer might buy to potentially acting on that customer’s behalf.
Payments add another layer of complexity, requiring businesses to establish clear rules around identity, authorization, data access, accountability and fraud protection when transactions involve autonomous agents.
Seven in ten expect disruption within two years
Despite those concerns, Egyptian executives largely expect agentic commerce to have a meaningful impact relatively quickly.
More than 70% of Egyptian respondents believe the technology will be at least moderately disruptive to their industries within the next two years.
Nearly two-thirds of Saudi respondents share that expectation, while businesses in the UAE anticipate an even greater degree of disruption.
But companies also want evidence before moving more aggressively.
Egyptian organizations identified industry-specific case studies as one of the most important factors that could accelerate adoption, while UAE companies placed greater emphasis on measurable returns on investment. Saudi businesses also highlighted peer recommendations and proven success stories.
The message emerging from the study is therefore less about an immediate rush toward autonomous commerce and more about businesses preparing for a technology they believe could become important before many of them fully understand what its final form will look like.
For Egypt, the 83% planning investments within two years is the headline number, but the nearly three-quarters who remain unfamiliar with agentic commerce may be the more revealing one.
The distance between those two figures is where the next phase of adoption will have to take place.