A coalition of major tech and retail companies, including Meta, Stripe, Walmart and Shopify, is developing open protocols that enable AI agents to make online purchases on behalf of users. Stripe Link’s digital wallet, with approximately 300 million users and one million merchants, saw AI agent purchases surge 38-fold in just one month by late September 2026. Meta’s Muse assistant, launched September 8, 2026, is the first personal agent integrated with Stripe Link, enabling purchases via one-time virtual cards, and added Shop Pay and PayPal integrations within two weeks. Several competing protocols currently coexist in this space, including the Personal Agent Protocol and the Universal Commerce Protocol, with no single framework yet dominating the market.
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