Three weeks ago I argued that Meta would stay upstream as a preference and affinity layer and leave checkout to retailers. Half of that held. Meta is not taking checkout from retailers. But Muse is more than a preference layer. It is an attempt to build a new orchestration point, one that sits between the consumer, the merchant, the wallet, and the payment network.

The shift I am watching is from wallet-centric commerce, where the merchant owns the interaction and presents payment choices, to agent-centric commerce, where the agent orchestrates merchant, wallet, credential, and transaction. If that shift happens at scale, Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, PayPal, banks, and wallets become services the agent can use. Meta owns the consumer relationship and the purchase intent, which is worth more.