US consumers are growing comfortable using AI to compare prices and discovering products on social media, but trust falls sharply once those experiences reach payment, according to data from e-commerce platform ESW. While 47% are comfortable using AI for price comparison and 45% discover products through social media, only 24% trust AI-powered payments and 27% trust social commerce checkout, with comfort skewing heavily generational, as 76% of Gen Z use social media for discovery against far lower Boomer figures. Cards remain the dominant and most-trusted payment method, with PayPal second and BNPL among the least trusted for international purchases, though one in five consumers used BNPL in the past year, rising to 31% of Millennials. Financial confidence is splitting behavior too, with more than one-third reporting decreased discretionary spending and unconfident shoppers trading down to cheaper options at far higher rates than confident ones.
