As AI Takes Over the Shopping Journey, Stripe and PayPal Race to Become AI Business Infrastructure

A Seismic Shift Confronting the "Payment Giants"

When AI Takes Over the 'Shopping Journey,' How Much Time Does PayPal Have Left?

Stripe and PayPal are shifting from payment tools to AI business infrastructure, competing to become the default engine for AI transactions.

In February 2026, an analysis published by BlockBeats paints a picture of how Stripe and PayPal are being forced into a fundamental transformation from "payment tools" to "AI business infrastructure" as AI agents begin to take control of the entire shopping journey. In a world where AI agents autonomously handle everything from product discovery and comparison to purchasing and returns management, payments become not "a service users consciously choose" but "invisible infrastructure embedded in the backend." Companies that fail to adapt to this structural change risk being pushed out of the market, even if they were dominant players in the e-commerce era.

Industry Landscape

The urgency behind this transformation stems from explosive growth projections for the Agentic Commerce market. According to consulting firm Edgar Dunn & Co.'s research, the AI-driven commerce market is expected to expand from the current $136 billion to $1.7 trillion by 2030, representing a compound annual growth rate of 67%. PayPal CEO Alex Chriss has positioned agentic commerce as "the biggest transformation since the birth of e-commerce," stating that 25% of online sales will be processed through AI agents by 2030.

A fierce battle for dominance over this market is unfolding among technology and payment companies. Forrester analysts describe the current stage as a "three-way race." OpenAI/Stripe's "Instant Checkout," Perplexity's "Buy With Pro," and Google's "Gemini" form the leading pack, each leveraging their unique strengths. However, Forrester classifies current services as "agent-assisted payments" rather than "true agentic payments." Challenges remain before fully autonomous AI payments can be realized, including authentication, fraud prevention, and clarification of liability.

The Stripe Camp -- Targeting "Transaction Standards" with ACP and Agentic Commerce Suite

Stripe's strategy centers on establishing "standard protocols for AI commerce" through its collaboration with OpenAI. The Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), jointly announced with OpenAI on September 29, 2025, is designed as an open standard under the Apache 2.0 license. At the core of ACP and Agentic Payment is the "Shared Payment Token (SPT)," a mechanism that allows AI agents to complete payments using temporary tokens tied to specific merchants and transaction amounts, without directly handling the buyer's payment credentials.

In December 2025, Stripe unveiled its Agentic Commerce Suite, establishing an end-to-end offering from product catalog distribution to payment processing and fraud detection. Previously, integrating with each new AI agent required approximately six months of development per platform, but this suite dramatically reduces integration costs. Major brands including URBN (Anthropologie, Free People, Urban Outfitters), Etsy, Ashley Furniture, Coach, and Kate Spade have begun early adoption.

At NRF 2026 in January 2026, a live survey showed that approximately 75% of retailers were either "already implementing" or "planning" agentic commerce. Over 25 ecosystem partners, including Salesforce Agentforce, Squarespace, and PwC, support ACP. Stripe's CEO described these systems as "always-on commercial copilots," envisioning a future where everything from checkout to fraud detection is handled autonomously.

The PayPal Camp -- Fighting Back with the Cymbio Acquisition and Moving "Upstream"

PayPal is mounting a comeback with a different approach from Stripe. Its agentic commerce services, announced in October 2025, are built on two pillars: "Agent Ready" and "Store Sync." Agent Ready enables PayPal's existing millions of merchants to accept payments on AI surfaces without additional technical work. Store Sync makes merchant product data discoverable on AI channels and seamlessly connects orders to existing fulfillment systems.

The most strategically significant move in PayPal's playbook is the acquisition of multi-channel orchestration company Cymbio, announced on January 22, 2026. The acquisition price is estimated at $150-200 million. Cymbio is a platform that helps brands sell through AI shopping surfaces such as Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity. Abercrombie & Fitch, Fabletics, Ashley Furniture, Newegg, and Adorama are already deploying products to Copilot and Perplexity via Cymbio. With this acquisition, PayPal is positioning itself to control the entire AI commerce value chain, from "upstream product discovery" to "downstream payment processing."

The Third Force -- Google and Microsoft's Entry Complicates the Competition

What makes the competition between payment companies even more complex is the entry of major technology companies. The Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), co-developed by Google and Shopify, is an open standard announced in January 2026 with more than 20 participating companies including Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart. UCP standardizes the entire commerce journey from product discovery to checkout and order management, featuring a flexible design that supports multiple transport protocols including REST, MCP (Model Context Protocol), AP2 (Agent Payments Protocol), and A2A (Agent2Agent).

Microsoft has adopted a strategy of embedding payment functionality directly within AI conversations through "Copilot Checkout". Payment capabilities are deployed across the Copilot ecosystem spanning Bing, MSN, and Edge, utilizing both PayPal and Stripe as payment infrastructure. Shopify merchants are automatically enrolled without needing to apply. Furthermore, major card networks Visa and Mastercard have each announced AI agent payment frameworks -- "Intelligent Commerce" and "Agent Pay" respectively -- with plans for global rollout from 2026 onward.

Impact and Implications for E-Commerce Businesses

What this competition poses to e-commerce businesses is a fundamental question: can you become a "store that AI agents choose"?

Start preparing for multi-protocol support. The coexistence of multiple protocols -- ACP, UCP, Microsoft Copilot Checkout, and others -- is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. For Shopify merchants, enabling Agentic Storefronts that support both ACP and UCP is the most efficient response. For those on proprietary e-commerce platforms, leverage Stripe's Agentic Commerce Suite and PayPal's Store Sync to secure product visibility across multiple AI surfaces.

Structured product catalogs will determine competitive advantage. As URBN's CIO explained at NRF 2026, a strategy of "starting with high-value product categories and progressively expanding" data optimization for AI agents is effective. The quality and granularity of information that AI needs for decision-making -- product names, descriptions, attribute data, inventory status, shipping information -- directly correlates with recommendation frequency from AI agents.

It's time to reassess payment partner selection. PayPal's strengths lie in its existing network of millions of merchants and Agent Ready's "no additional development required" AI compatibility. Stripe's strengths lie in ACP's reach as an open standard and the secure payment foundation provided by SPT. Rather than choosing one or the other, a "multi-payment partner strategy" that leverages both PayPal and Stripe -- as Microsoft Copilot does -- is worth considering.

Conclusion

The competition between Stripe and PayPal is fundamentally different from the traditional rivalry over payment processing efficiency. What both companies are competing for is the position of "default infrastructure" when AI agents execute commercial transactions. With the entry of Google's UCP, Microsoft's Copilot Checkout, and Visa and Mastercard's agent-oriented frameworks, this competition has evolved into a structural transformation engulfing the entire payment industry. As PCMI (Payments and Commerce Markets Intelligence) analysis points out, this turning point is "a strategic inflection point comparable to the dawn of mobile payments and the internet itself." For e-commerce businesses, rather than betting on a specific protocol or payment partner, building a flexible foundation that enables product deployment across multiple AI surfaces is the most pragmatic strategy for surviving this seismic shift.