Meta, Sierra, Genesys, Rocket, Shopify, and Walmart are developing the Personal Agent Protocol, an open standard for AI agents to interact with businesses. This initiative aims to enable autonomous shopping on behalf of users.
Stripe’s Link wallet, serving 300 million users and 1 million merchants, reported a 38-fold increase in agent-initiated purchases in the month leading up to late September 2026.
Meta launched its AI assistant Muse on September 8, 2026, featuring Stripe Link integration for virtual card payments. Within two weeks, Muse added support for Shop Pay and PayPal, alongside purchase protection features.
Several industry protocols are emerging to standardize agent-driven commerce. These include the Universal Commerce Protocol, involving Walmart, Shopify, Google, Target, Etsy, and Wayfair, and the Agentic Commerce Protocol, co-developed by Stripe and OpenAI in September 2025.
Stripe also introduced the Machine Payment Protocol with Tempo in March 2026 to manage automated payment initiation. Additionally, Genesys expanded its collaborations in September 2026, focusing on customer experience orchestration using A2A and MCP protocols.
