I thought it was time for a payment data update. Given Paypal’s Feb 2025 investor day, JPM’s “Retail Media Network” now re-labled Media Solutions and JPM’s lawsuit against Transunion/Argus. My perspective is formed from my 8 yrs as CEO/Founder of Commerce Signals. I’ll touch on signals, intent and agentic at the end.
$4B market opportunity (18 mo), who will lead it?
Today’s blog covers possible pricing models and market structures for agentic transactions, a new type of demand (purchase order with a payment instrument). Retailers may despise the idea of a new aggregator, but they can’t say “no” to a PO by their customer. US retailers spend over $400B on marketing ($90B of which is digital marketing). There is no CAC for an agentic transaction.. While the daily innovations of AI and Agentic is fascinating, it is the economics and structures for pricing value that will influence participation, value creation and market success.
Continue readingFollowing up on yesterday’s discussion about the potential for US Banks to issue stablecoins, the fintech world is abuzz after Stripe’s Sessions announcements covering AI and stablecoin. Given Stripe’s massive influence, any move they make warrants attention. The question on many payment strategy executives’ minds: Is Stripe about to unleash stablecoins to circumvent traditional card rails for consumer payments? While the crypto-evangelists might be shouting “yes!”, a more pragmatic and skeptical view suggests this is highly unlikely, at least for the core retail checkout experience.
Continue readingNavigating a New Demand Paradigm and Its Two-Sided Imperative
The rise of agentic commerce, where AI agents could potentially execute purchases for consumers, signals more than an evolutionary step in e-commerce; it represents the emergence of a new type of demand: a direct customer buy order, theoretically complete with payment authorization. This presents a two-sided imperative for retailers. Firstly, ensuring your products are discoverable and favorably considered by these AI agents an “SEO for the agentic era.” Secondly, developing the organizational capacity to act on this demand, potentially bypassing traditional e-commerce pathways for direct fulfillment via APIs, with updates to fraud and risk screening.
Continue readingThe emergence of agentic commerce represents a watershed moment for the retail industry. While the path to full commercialization is paved with significant challenges, it also presents unparalleled opportunities for innovation, differentiation, and the forging of deeper, more intelligent customer relationships. For Chief Marketing Officers, this new frontier demands proactive leadership, strategic foresight, and a willingness to embrace transformative change.
Continue readingWhy merchants prefer cards they control. Implications for Agentic, Pay By Bank and beyond…
Short Blog. My last blogs on the topic were Acceptance Hurdles (2022) and the more technical list of 14 core processing activities in Acceptance Part 1 (2016).
An update to my Data Games – 2021
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Electronic receipts (eReceipts) COULD transform the retail landscape by offering numerous benefits to consumers and businesses. With the potential to enhance digital wallets, improve customer experiences, empower AI agents, and increase advertising effectiveness. However, the widespread adoption and sharing SKU-level data face several challenges, most of which are NOT technical. Today, I’m providing an overview of key business and economic challenges of unlocking SKU data.
A follow-up to my previous post covering Identity, Authentication and Risk
FIDO2, eID, Mobile Wallets, and other initiatives are rapidly advancing to a future of passwordless authentication. “Perfect Authentication” will be highly disruptive to all payment networks, methods and stakeholders. This blog outlines the rough economic impact, winners and losers in a future scenario. Today’s blog is not a dissertation but a “framework” providing puts and takes on disruption due to better authentication.
New Payment Experiences
Topics today (pardon the typos)
The top questions coming out of Money 2020 were: is the US payments environment maturing? Are there still opportunities for break out growth? Where? Who is best positioned and why? Today I will be taking part of that on.