While the industry recognizes that agentic commerce is reshaping payments, the more immediate technical friction lies in how it re-engineers data sharing. We are moving past the “top-of-funnel” coordination of inventory and pricing seen in protocols like UCP/MCP, entering the more contentious territory of AP2/ACP to coordinate trust and payment.

The Collaboration Paradox

As I’ve noted in Strategic Innovation Era, we are seeing a “Retailer First” surge. Successes like Walmart’s Sparky and Amazon’s Rufus prove that retailers are intent on controlling their own data and checkout environments.

However, external collaboration is mandatory for scale. I remain a proponent of Google’s approach: rather than a monolithic LLM, they are building a world of specialist model partnerships. But collaboration requires data exchange—the primary point of friction in this stage of strategic innovation.