Tag Archives: OpenAI

Visa CLI and X402 CONVERGENCE

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Last week I wrote about MPP and x402 solving the internet’s original sin: the inability of machines to pay machines without a human in the loop. This week, Visa made that argument a lot easier to make.

Visa Crypto Labs quietly launched Visa CLI, a command line tool that gives AI agents a wallet. One npm install. One setup command. And your agent can pay for anything on the internet, charged to a real Visa card, without an API key, without a pre-funded crypto wallet, without human intervention.

I got beta access this week and tested it. Here’s what I learned, and why I think the CLI is the most important signal yet that the incumbent payment networks are serious about the agentic commerce era.

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The Evolution of Checkout: Invisible, Instant, and Everything In Between

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My friend Simon Taylor at Fintech Brainfood published a provocative piece this week: The Checkout is Dead, Part 2. His thesis is elegant — the future of agentic commerce is invisible. No cart. No confirmation screen. No “Pay Now” button. Just an event in the world, and money moves.

IMHO He’s right about the general direction. But he’s wrong about the scope and timeline. Not everything fits in instant, and its really important to look not only at OpenAI’s instant checkout FAILURE at Walmart, but also their internal success (ie Sparky driving 35% sales increase with internal checkout).

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Explaining the Death of OpenAI’s Instant Checkout

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Short Blog

To my regular readers, you know the flow of data within a network is complex (see Data Games). The news that OpenAI is effectively shelving its “Instant Checkout” initiative in favor of a referral-based “conversational commerce” model shouldn’t come as a surprise. While the tech press might frame this as a strategic pivot, those of us in the eCommerce trenches know it for what it is: a collision with merchant’s role in risk, costs, CX, control and their own AI dreams.

OpenAI attempted to solve its monetization problem by trying to seize control of the top of the funnel, betting that the sheer volume of consumer demand would force merchants to bow to their interface. They were wrong. They fundamentally miscalculated the power dynamics of the transaction and the complexity of the global conversion funnel, a funnel that Google understands intimately because they serve both ends of it globally (ie merchant partners).

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AP2 as Merchant Signals – 4 Scenarios 

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Today I’m outlining three near-term scenarios (24 months) for how AP2 signals will work in agentic commerce. Per my blog last week, AP2 is the agentic payment scheme with the most momentum (160+ partners), but in the immediate term (2026–2027), it will operate primarily in a “signals” metaphor for 3 main reasons:

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Walmart and Open AI

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Quick Take

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This week: Walmart announced a partnership with OpenAI to integrate shopping directly into ChatGPT, complete with an Instant Checkout feature. The market reacted instantly, driving WMT stock up over 5%. If you weren’t already paying attention to agentic commerce, you should be now.

For experts in payments and eCommerce, this deal is the ultimate realization of Walmart’s Everyday Low Prices (ELP) strategy. ELP is their cornerstone, and when you lead on price, you can afford to be channel agnostic. Walmart is signaling that they will be everywhere the customer is buying.

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Stripe Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP)

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The best, and perhaps only, operable protocol that can solve agent payment issues today.

Stripe’s Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), co-developed with OpenAI, is a functional leap forward in enabling agentic commerce. While its open-source nature invites broad adoption, Stripe is uniquely able to “make it work” by leveraging its existing fraud-fighting assets. Another less reported benefit of ACP is payment rail agnostic operation. ACP will work for paybybank, PIX, EFTPOS, Swish, Bizum or anything else. Anywhere that Stipe’s device graph and Radar (Risk/Fraud) are effective. Stripe’s secure payment token plus risk signals allow merchants to operate the way they do today (no operational change).

ACP may only have a limited 2-3 yr runway as more advanced authentication methods become mainstream, and network rule sets/services advance to serve all agent providers (leveling the playing field).

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The Next GREAT RETAILER CONSOLIDATION? 

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Can retailers resist AI Platforms? I don’t think so..

Agentic Commerce is in a state of flux. While the AI platforms provide a glimpse of what conversational commerce will look like, most aren’t able to complete a transaction. 

Shopify and OpenAi are leading the way in creating a best in class integration that will change all that (see overview). For the millions of merchants on Shopify’s platform, participating in the conversational AI revolution will become as simple as flicking a switch. Shopify is handling the backend (real-time product data/inventory, payment and checkout). I love Shopify; their execution is consistently flawless, and I have no doubt this will be another seamless, successful product launch.

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