The digitalisation of payments was just the first step in the evolution of how customers interact with cinemas. Despite not being the industry that first comes to mind when one thinks of digital payments and new pricing strategies, cinemas have become more technologically adept than their external image may suggest. You can read the article Edgar, Dunn & Company (EDC) published about the cinema industry before these new developments occurred, here.

Offering new digital payment methods was an important step for cinemas to remain relevant in a world increasingly dominated by online streaming services. These alternative methods helped reduce the friction that customers experienced during the payment process, therefore increasing ticket sales. Agentic commerce has the potential of changing the way cinemas accept bookings in the future.  

Agentic commerce is an emerging model of commerce that enables AI Agents to autonomously navigate the entire shopping journey – from discovery to payment – on behalf of consumers. The AI Agent can complete tasks for a user, such as searching for items, comparing options, and making a purchase, with limited or no manual input needed from that user.

The agentic commerce transaction flow in cinemas is likely to look like the following:

1. Customer tells the AI agent what it wants via a prompt, for example: “Find me a screening of the new James Bond movie tomorrow night for 2 adults in Barbican, after 8pm.” (Alternatively, the customer might not know what movie they want to watch, and can instead provide the agent with what genre, language, etc., which the agent can use to return suitable options);
2. The agent will filter different options based on the customer’s prompt and preferences, taking into account factors like seat type, budget, 3D option;
3. The customer selected their most preferred option from the agent’s shortlist and confirms they want to proceed with the booking;
4. Upon clicking a “Buy Now” button, the agent can also aggregate any loyalty points or applicable membership benefits the customer might have;
5. The card network or wallet provider creates and supplies a unique payment token to the customers’ agent and authenticates the payment;
6. The agent completes the transaction, ensuring all prices align and all loyalty/membership benefits have been applied.

The evidence of this is already being seen; in the UAE, Mastercard has partnered with Majid Al Futtaim and Dataiera to allow customers to use its Agent Pay in various retailers . The first transaction was the successful purchase of a cinema ticket at Majid Al Futtaim’s VOX Cinema. The fact that a cinema ticket purchase was chosen as the trial transaction showcases the industry’s readiness and openness to agentic commerce.

Cinemas are a great testbed for agentic commerce for a few different reasons:

• Purchases follow a structured, repeatable journey – customers find and select the movie they want to watch, they book the tickets, and then attend the screening;
• The average ticket price is generally quite low, meaning there is less risk for the cinema during early trials;
• Customers who are planning to go to the cinema will usually have a specific movie and time in mind – this gives the agent clear constraints to work within;
• Certain cinemas are already experimenting AI-powered solutions, meaning the appetite and demand for AI is present. Cineplex, for example, has integrated Rokt’s - an AI-powered ecommerce technology platform that personalizes the checkout experience for online shoppers, allowing brands to display relevant offers to customers at the "Transaction Moment" -  into its e-commerce checkout flow to deliver relevant ads to customers in real-time.

Agentic commerce can also help manage some of the pain points that cinemas have been experiencing. Managing dynamic pricing strategies is a complex process for cinemas and can lead to consumer dissatisfaction if not done correctly. Agents can solve this problem by updating ticket prices in real-time. Additionally, as long as the prompt is clear, customer agents can reduce complexity by returning a single, best option ticket to the consumer – taking into account all the pricing complexities.

In terms of fraud, security and chargebacks, there will always be a question of how much customers can really trust agents. There is a delicate balance in the amount of information that is safe to give to any AI tool – this is something that all industries need to tackle, and developments are occurring daily to counter this. In practice, network level security, wallet based credentials and specialised fraud platforms are evolving quickly enough that robust protections are likely to be in place before agentic commerce reaches mass scale; the real task for cinemas is choosing partners and architectures that inherit those controls rather than trying to build them alone.

The global cinema industry generated just over $31 billion in revenue in 2024 according to the World Intellectual Property Organization . EDC estimates that this will grow to $51 billion by 2030. Within the cinema market, the share of the transactions initiated by agents is still limited, likely representing less than 1% of the total revenue today. This share will expand significantly in the next few years, as agentic commerce is expected to become a key driver of future monetisation in the cinema industry, with an estimated total spend of just under $9 billion in 2030, which represents nearly 18% of cinema revenue, suggesting that around 1 in 5 ticket purchases may be initiated or completed by an AI agent.  

Initial agentic commerce deployments will follow the same route as the UAE Agent Pay standard: agents will be used for simple “book and pay” transaction flows. Over time, however, as trust grows and the infrastructure becomes more advanced, agents may be utilised to contribute to the customers’ experience even more. Agents could assemble packages that combine tickets, food and beverage pre-orders, and even parking. Cinemas that move fast and embrace AI will be the ones who are most likely to win in this new, agentic commerce era.

The cinema industry is on the edge of an important shift, moving from today’s early pilots to a world where agent initiated bookings and payments become a normal part of how movie nights are organised. Over the next decade, the key question is whether cinema operators can shape that shift to their advantage or risk seeing value captured by card schemes, wallets, super apps and other platforms that sit closer to the customer. Edgar, Dunn & Company can help cinemas design the right customer use cases, quantify the commercial upside, and identify and select the technology and payment partners needed to bring agentic commerce from pilot to scaled reality.

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The content of this article does not reflect the official opinion of Edgar, Dunn & Company. The information and views expressed in this publication belong solely to the author(s).

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