Stripe, Meta, Walmart, and Shopify are building the infrastructure for AI agents to shop for you

A coalition of major technology and retail companies is quietly rewriting the rules of online commerce, moving from a world where you click “buy” to one where your AI agent does it while you’re doing something else entirely. Meta, Sierra, Genesys, Rocket, Shopify, and Walmart have announced work on the Personal Agent Protocol, an open standard designed to let personal AI agents interact directly with businesses on behalf of their users. The numbers behind the shift The commercial stakes are not abstract. Stripe’s Link digital wallet, which counts approximately 300 million users and connects to around 1 million merchants, has seen agentic purchases surge 38-fold over the past month leading into late September 2026. Meta’s AI assistant, Muse, launched on September 8, 2026, as the first personal agent to integrate with Stripe Link, giving it the ability to complete purchases through one-time virtual cards or stored payment credentials. Within two weeks of launch, Muse added Shop Pay and PayPal integrations, and it became the first agent to offer purchase protections to users. Walmart is positioned as a major connector within the Muse ecosystem alongside other large retailers. A fragme...