What do online merchants see when your AI shopping agent checks out?

What does a merchant see when an AI agent buys something?

The merchant sees the agent's network identity (datacenter vs residential IP, ASN), transport fingerprint (TLS/HTTP version), header presentation (user-agent coherence, sec-fetch-* headers, Accept-Language), funnel behaviour (did it view the catalog before checkout, pacing between steps), any Web Bot Auth signature, and — on payment — wallet history, settlement latency and amount exactness. These are scored to classify the buyer as browser, honest automation, or hostile script.

Why does my buying agent get blocked at checkout?

Most common causes: a Mozilla user-agent with no sec-fetch-* headers (impersonation mismatch), tool-default user-agents like python-requests or node-fetch, datacenter IPs, millisecond pacing between steps, and skipping the catalog. Each is an automation signal default bot filters act on before checkout completes.

How can I test what merchants see when my agent buys?

Run the agent through a real instrumented checkout that returns the merchant-side forensic file instead of a product. Glass Merchant does exactly this: a free presentation-only run returns your header and transport forensics; a paid 1 USDC run on Base adds payment forensics. Real merchants never open their fraud dashboards to you, so an instrumented store is the only mirror.

Glass Merchant — run your own agent through an instrumented checkout →

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