Zalando is preparing to turn its app into more than a marketplace.
From 2027, its own AI agent will be able to buy products from external online shops on a customer’s behalf without the customer leaving the Zalando app.
The company calls the model Zalando Extended.
Westwing is the first pilot partner, starting with home and living products that Zalando does not sell itself. Zalando says those products can appear inside its platform, while the agent handles checkout with the partner shop for the customer.
That makes this more than another recommendation feature.
It changes where discovery, transaction and advertising can happen.
For European merchants, the interesting question is whether Zalando is becoming an interface layer over third-party commerce rather than simply expanding its own catalogue.
Zalando Extended moves the marketplace boundary
Traditional marketplace logic is straightforward.
A platform lists products that are sold through its own marketplace infrastructure. The customer shops within the platform’s catalogue, then checks out through the platform.
Zalando Extended loosens that boundary.
Zalando says it will add products from other online shops that it does not itself sell. Customers remain inside the Zalando app, and from 2027 the company’s AI agent will be able to complete purchases from those external shops on their behalf.
That creates a different commercial relationship.
The partner does not necessarily need to become a conventional Zalando marketplace seller for the customer to discover and buy its products through Zalando’s interface.
Westwing is the first test case.
The cooperation began in 2026, and Zalando says its agent will be able to check out Westwing home and living products directly from the Zalando app from 2027.
The company has not yet specified which countries will get the capability first.
The agent is becoming a transaction layer
AI shopping assistants are often discussed as discovery tools.
They help the user narrow choices, answer product questions or compare options.
Zalando Extended pushes further into execution.
If the agent can move from recommendation to checkout on another merchant’s site, then the user relationship shifts.
The merchant can still own the underlying product, fulfilment and commercial terms, but Zalando may control more of the discovery and transaction experience.
That is similar to the broader move toward agentic commerce that NEMO has been tracking with merchant-facing agent protocols and Shopify’s agent-commerce infrastructure.
The difference is that Zalando already has a large European consumer audience, an established fashion-shopping interface and its own recommendation data.
That gives the agent a distribution advantage that a standalone shopping assistant may not have.
Retail media is built into the model
The second part of the announcement is easy to overlook.
Zalando says partner shops participating in Zalando Extended will also be able to advertise their products through its retail-media business.
That matters because it creates a closed commercial loop.
A partner can potentially gain visibility inside Zalando, pay for additional exposure through retail media, and let the platform’s agent complete the purchase on the customer’s behalf.
For Zalando, that creates more ways to monetise third-party commerce without necessarily owning the inventory.
The retail-media business is already growing.
Zalando reported that retail-media revenue increased nearly 18% year over year in Q3 and reached 2% of B2C GMV. Its partner share also rose to 33.6% of B2C GMV.
Those figures do not tell us how much revenue Zalando Extended will generate.
They do show that the new agentic-commerce model is being added to a business where partner sales and advertising are already strategic growth areas.
Merchants should separate reach from control
The attraction for an external retailer is obvious.
Zalando says partner shops can reach its customers without complex technical integration or changes to their logistics.
That can lower the cost of opening another acquisition channel.
But a merchant should also ask what it gives up.
If discovery and checkout happen inside Zalando, the merchant may have less control over parts of the customer journey.
Questions include:
- Which product data does Zalando ingest?
- How does the agent decide which partner product to recommend?
- What happens when several shops sell similar items?
- Which merchant controls pricing and promotions?
- Who owns the customer relationship after purchase?
- What conversion data flows back to the merchant?
- How are returns and customer-service issues surfaced?
- Can the merchant measure the incremental value of retail-media spend?
Those details will determine whether Zalando Extended behaves more like a referral channel, a marketplace, a retail-media network or something in between.
Product data becomes even more important
Agentic commerce increases the value of structured product information.
If an AI agent is expected to recommend and transact across products from multiple shops, it needs reliable information about price, availability, variants, delivery conditions and product attributes.
A merchant with inconsistent data can lose visibility before any ad auction begins.
That makes feed quality part of acquisition.
For retailers considering participation, the immediate preparation work is practical.
Audit product titles, category mappings, size and variant data, availability, shipping terms and return policies.
Then check whether those fields remain accurate across the external shop and whatever product feed Zalando consumes.
The customer may never visit the merchant’s site before purchase.
If so, the data Zalando receives becomes the storefront.
This is a 2027 commerce bet, not a live channel yet
The timing matters.
Zalando Extended exists as a product initiative, but the agent-led external checkout is scheduled for 2027.
There is no evidence yet about conversion rate, merchant economics, customer adoption or which European markets will launch first.
Westwing is a pilot partner, not proof that the model is ready for broad merchant adoption.
That should keep expectations grounded.
Still, the direction is clear.
Zalando is testing a model where its app can surface products it does not sell, its AI can transact with the external merchant, and its retail-media business can sell visibility around that discovery layer.
For European ecommerce teams, that is worth watching because it shifts the competitive question.
The merchant may no longer be deciding only whether to sell on a marketplace.
It may also have to decide whether to let a marketplace’s AI shop across its own store on the customer’s behalf.