Published:
April 2, 2026
Reading time:
3 minute read
Written by:
Forter Team
At Shoptalk Spring 2026 in Las Vegas, the theme “retail in the age of AI” couldn’t have been more prevalent. It showed up everywhere, across stages, panels, and in nearly every conversation between retailers trying to make sense of what comes next.
But beneath the AI narrative, one question kept surfacing — who is actually behind each retail interaction?
That question has always been central to commerce. AI is making it harder to answer and more consequential to get wrong. Across a week of sessions and curated conversations, Forter explored that challenge alongside partners Salesforce, ESW, and many others — here’s what we took away.
The New Rules of Refunds and CX for the AI Era
Refunds abuse have become one of the most consequential pressure points in modern retail, where margin leakage, customer experience, and abuse all collide.
As AI accelerates how people shop, it’s also reshaping how returns are handled. New channels like TikTok Shop are introducing entirely different risk dynamics, limiting visibility into customer behavior while increasing return abuse attempts. AI is lowering the barrier further, from generating convincing “damaged product” claims to probing policies for weaknesses at scale.
In a session with Glossier, Kaitlyn Johns, Sr. Director of Digital Product and Engineering, framed the challenge directly.
“We’ve always taken a trust-first approach to returns, because that’s core to the customer experience,” said Johns. “But as abuse becomes more sophisticated, you need more precision behind the scenes. Working with a partner like Forter gives us the ability to stay current with how fraud is evolving, and to make decisions based on a broader view of customer behavior, not just what we see within our own ecosystem.”
The answer isn’t to tighten returns across the board. It’s to know your customer and channels well enough to tell the difference. Leading brands are moving away from one-size-fits-all policies toward more adaptive approaches, keeping returns seamless for trusted customers while applying greater scrutiny where the signals warrant it. That requires a view of identity that extends beyond your own four walls.
To learn more about identifying, quantifying, and eliminating returns abuse head here.
Commerce x AI Agents
The identity challenge doesn’t stop at returns. It gets structurally harder as AI agents enter the picture.
At an executive experience hosted with Vercel and Salesforce inside the Coach store, Forter’s Kerry Hudson, SVP of Global Sales and Alliances, joined Mandeep Bhatia, VP of Global Digital Product and Omnichannel Innovation at Tapestry, and Caleb Bryant, Commerce GTM at Salesforce, to discuss what building for the AI era actually demands.
AI agents are not yet a primary driver of transactions, but they are beginning to shape how products are discovered, evaluated, and purchased. Commerce systems built for direct, human interaction now need to account for interactions that are mediated, accelerated, and less visible. As agents sit between the customer and the transaction, many of the signals retailers have historically relied on become less reliable, concentrating risk at key moments across the journey.
The takeaway is not to rebuild everything at once, but to prepare for a model that looks fundamentally different. Preparing for that shift requires more than new tools. It requires alignment across partners, platforms, and teams, as well as a clearer understanding of how these interactions are changing in practice.
Forter’s Agentic Commerce Collective was built for exactly that, bringing together commerce leaders to work through what agentic commerce actually requires, and how to support it with confidence. For leaders looking to stay ahead of this shift, join the Agentic Commerce Collective here.
The Main Takeaways
Across every conversation at Shoptalk, from the main stage to the Coach store, the Commerce Cabana, dinner at Beauty & Essex, and a private evening at Sphere, one theme kept surfacing — AI is accelerating every layer of commerce, and with it, every layer of risk.
In the age of AI, knowing who is behind each interaction is the foundation on which everything else is built. Getting it right is what separates retailers who grow with confidence from those absorbing the cost of getting it wrong.
Forter works alongside partners like Salesforce, ESW, SCAYLE, Airwallex, Vercel, Listrak, Ekyam.ai, and Aries Solutions to help retailers do exactly that — know who is behind every interaction and use that intelligence to deliver seamless experiences while making smarter, faster decisions across the entire commerce journey.
Source link
