​The Account Creation Paradox: How AI Agents Could Transform E-Commerce Registration

Craig DeWitt is the founder of Skyfire, a payment network for AI.

Every merchant leadership team I meet agrees on two things. The first is that customer relationships are the business. Accounts, loyalty, purchase history and permission to communicate are what separate a brand from a vending operation. The second is that the moment designed to create that relationship—account registration—is one of the most disliked steps in all of shopping.

Baymard Institute has tracked the reasons shoppers abandon carts for more than a decade, and being asked to create an account consistently ranks near the top of the list. Think about what that means. A customer has found the product, decided to buy and reached for their wallet. At the exact peak of their intent, we interrupt them with a form. The form asks them to invent a password they will forget, confirm an email address and volunteer personal details before they have received anything in return.

Some buyers simply leave. Many of the ones who stay protect themselves with a throwaway email and whatever birthday gets them through the screen. The customer relationship starts with friction.

The Truce Nobody Likes

Guest checkout became the industry’s compromise, and it is a strange one when you look at it directly. To save the sale, the merchant gives up the relationship. The customer gets convenience, the brand gets a transaction with no guaranteed future and the premise of direct commerce quietly leaks away one order at a time.

Merchants accepted this trade because the alternative was losing the order entirely, but we are leaving that world.

What Agents Change About The Beginning

This is not a speculative audience, either. Salesforce measured $262 billion in global online sales influenced by AI and agents during the 2025 holiday season alone. The delegation habit is forming right now, at scale, and every delegated purchase raises a similar question: What happens to the relationship when the customer sends software in their place?