Your weekly briefing on payments, AI, and commerce.
The week machines started buying things. Here is what you need to know.
This was a defining week for agentic commerce. Alipay crossed 120 million agent transactions. Google shipped live checkout inside Gemini. eBay banned AI shopping bots. Amazon sued to stop them. And the protocols that will govern how machines buy things started taking shape.
Here is everything we published this week, and why it matters.
The Agentic Commerce Stack: How AI Agents Shop, Pay, and Close the Deal
Google, Alipay, and Coinbase are building the protocols that let machines buy things. We mapped the three-layer stack: intent, protocol, and payment. From Google's Universal Commerce Protocol to Alipay's Trust Protocol to Coinbase's x402, the plumbing of agentic commerce is being assembled in real time.
The Marketplace Extinction Event: Why eBay and Amazon Are Fighting AI Agents for Survival
eBay banned AI shopping bots effective February 20. Amazon sued Perplexity AI. Google shipped live agentic checkout with Etsy and Wayfair. The marketplaces that defined e-commerce are fighting for relevance against the AI platforms building around them. Morgan Stanley projects $190-385 billion in agentic shopping by 2030.
Consumers Want AI Agents to Shop for Them. A Calendar Invite Can Hijack the Whole Thing.
New PYMNTS Intelligence research shows 70 percent of consumers are ready to let AI agents handle their shopping. The same week, a security firm disclosed a perfect-score vulnerability in Claude Desktop Extensions that let a calendar invite hijack an agent with payment credentials. The demand is surging. The security model is not ready.
The Company That Was Supposed to Kill Ads Just Started Selling Them.
OpenAI launched advertising in ChatGPT. Target and Roundel are among the first partners. The company that was supposed to replace the ad-supported internet is now joining it. We looked at what this means for the AI business model and why it matters for payments and commerce.
The App Store for AI Content Is Coming. Amazon and Microsoft Are Racing to Build It.
The free-for-all era of AI companies scraping the web is ending. Amazon and Microsoft are building content marketplaces where publishers get paid for training data. We broke down the emerging licensing economy and what it means for the future of AI content.
Search Isn't Dying. It's Splitting.
Google's Q4 2025 search revenue grew 17 percent to $63.1 billion. In the same quarter, clicks to external websites continued to decline. Search is not disappearing. It is splitting into two layers: one that answers questions inside the AI interface, and one that drives transactions. We mapped what that split means for commerce and payments.
Government by Turnaround: What Happens When a Payments CEO Runs the Tax System
The man who merged First Data with Fiserv and built a payments giant processing 44 percent of U.S. card transactions is now running the IRS. We looked at what happens when a payments operator brings private-sector restructuring playbooks to the most complex financial system in government.
From Chatbot to Coworker: The Week AI Agents Went Corporate
OpenAI and Anthropic shipped agent platforms the same day. With a 24 percent success rate on real-world tasks, the gap between demo and deployment is still wide. We analysed what both launches mean and where the enterprise agent market is heading.
That is the week. Eight pieces covering the convergence of payments, AI, and commerce from every angle. If you only read one, make it the Agentic Commerce Stack. It is the piece that ties everything else together.
See you next week.
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