Making sense of agentic commerce and AI assurance for business leaders
I write and analyse agentic commerce and AI assurance because I think these two layers will shape how companies are found, evaluated, transacted with, audited, and insured over the next several years, and most of the work of designing that infrastructure is happening now. The commercial consequences are large. The trust, identity, and assurance consequences are larger. Both deserve careful, sustained, plain-language coverage written for the people who actually have to make decisions inside companies.
My writing covers agentic commerce, the trust, identity, AI risk and AI assurance layer underneath it, and the commercial and technical readiness work that lets a company stay visible, trusted, and chosen as AI takes on more of the buying and evaluation work.
Background
I spent two decades in senior technology leadership before turning to this work. As CIO at SkyCity Entertainment Group, I was responsible for enterprise-wide digital transformation, data strategy, and cybersecurity. As CTO at Stuff (formerly Fairfax Media NZ), I led the technology function for New Zealand's largest digital media company and introduced generative AI to automate content workflows across 50 newspapers.
That background shapes how I write about agentic commerce and AI assurance. I tend to look at these shifts from both a strategic and operational perspective, not as abstract trends but as practical changes that affect growth, visibility, trust, risk, and market access for real businesses.
Current work
I publish "This Week in Agentic Commerce", a weekly LinkedIn newsletter, and "Inside Agentic Commerce", a fortnightly long-form essay at newsletter.andymcpherson.com. Both are written for commercial, growth, and digital leaders inside B2B SaaS, B2B commerce, payments, and identity-adjacent categories; for risk underwriters and insurance specialists working on AI exposure; and for AI assurance, audit, and governance professionals.
I am also a Director of CiteCompass, and build tools that help organisations measure how AI systems cite and recommend them. The combination of the writing and the building work means I look at agentic commerce and AI assurance from inside the category, not from a distance.
Why I focus on this
Agent commerce, AI trust and identity, AI risk, and AI assurance look like separate topics if you cover them piece by piece. They are one shift. Agents are starting to act commercially on behalf of buyers and businesses, and at the same time the trust, identity, risk and assurance scaffolding underneath them is being designed in real time. Companies that engage with both layers early will help write the standards. Companies that wait will be implementing the decisions of someone else. That is the shift I think is worth writing about, every week, for the leaders who have to make sense of it inside their own organisations.