EC & AI Commerce News Digest (March 19, 2026)

Today's Top Story

Visa Scales Agentic Commerce Through Stripe Protocol — A2A Payment Standardization Advances

Visa Scales Agentic Commerce Through Stripe Protocol Collaboration | PYMNTS.com

Visa is supporting Stripe and Tempo's Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) by enabling card-based payments for trusted autonomous agent payments.

Visa has announced support for Stripe's "Agent-to-Agent (A2A) protocol" and Tempo's "Machine Payments Protocol (MPP)." This move establishes the foundation for AI agents to autonomously execute card-based payments.

The announcement includes the release of a CLI version of the "Intelligent Commerce Toolkit (ICT)," enabling developers to implement AI agent payment capabilities from the command line. Following yesterday's "Agentic Ready Program" announcement, technical implementation is advancing rapidly.

A major payment network supporting open agent-to-agent communication protocols represents a significant step toward standardizing agentic commerce payment infrastructure. The collaboration among Stripe, Tempo, and Visa is expected to significantly lower the barrier for developers implementing AI agent payments.

Full article: Visa Scales Agentic Commerce Payments Through Stripe's A2A Protocol

Coupang and NVIDIA Partner to Build "AI Factory" for E-Commerce — Optimizing Search and Logistics with GPUs

Coupang NVIDIA Collaboration on "AI Factory" Is Powering the Future of E-Commerce Logistics

Coupang and NVIDIA highlight new AI innovations

South Korea's largest e-commerce company Coupang has partnered with NVIDIA to build an "AI Factory" powering its entire e-commerce operations. Leveraging NVIDIA's GPU clusters, the company is fully deploying AI across product search, recommendations, and logistics optimization.

Coupang holds a dominant share of South Korea's e-commerce market and is known for its proprietary logistics network "Rocket Delivery." Through this NVIDIA partnership, the company plans to apply GPU-based AI inference across its entire logistics operations, including delivery route optimization, demand forecasting, and warehouse automation.

As a major e-commerce AI infrastructure investment case, this initiative serves as a reference point for other e-commerce operators.

Full article: Coupang and NVIDIA Build "AI Factory"

Agentic Commerce

Walmart Drops OpenAI Checkout, Switches to In-House AI "Sparky"

Walmart Dumps OpenAI Checkout, Plugs Sparky Into ChatGPT

Walmart pivots from failed OpenAI Instant Checkout to embed Sparky across ChatGPT and Gemini

Walmart has reportedly ended its partnership with OpenAI's instant checkout feature and integrated its own AI assistant "Sparky" into the checkout process.

This is the "other side" of the OpenAI checkout scale-back news we covered yesterday. Walmart recognized the risks of depending on external AI and chose to switch to an AI solution built on its own data and customer understanding. This marks a notable move by a major retailer pivoting toward in-house AI capabilities.

This development highlights a critical question in agentic commerce: should the AI experience be controlled by platform providers or retail operators?

Full article: Walmart Drops OpenAI Checkout, Switches to In-House AI "Sparky"

POP.STORE Launches First Agentic AI Commerce Platform

Pop.Store launches agentic AI commerce platform for creators

Pop.Store, the creator super-app, announced the availability of AI Echo-Me, an agentic AI commerce platform built specifically for creators.

Creator super-app POP.STORE has announced the launch of "AI Echo-Me," an agentic AI commerce platform. The AI agent, designed specifically for creators, automates product sales and fan interactions.

Positioned at the intersection of the creator economy and agentic commerce, this service demonstrates how AI adoption is expanding for individual business operators.

Full article: POP.STORE Launches "AI Echo-Me"

F5 and Skyfire Form Strategic Partnership for Agent Payment Security Infrastructure

F5 and Skyfire Partner to Advance Secure Agentic Commerce

F5 and Skyfire partner to advance secure agentic commerce.

Network security leader F5 and AI agent payment startup Skyfire have announced a strategic partnership. The two companies will jointly build security and authentication infrastructure for AI agents conducting autonomous payments.

As agentic commerce expands, fraud prevention and identity verification are among the most critical challenges. By combining F5's network security technology with Skyfire's payment protocol, they aim to enable secure agent-to-agent transactions.

Full article: F5 and Skyfire: Agent Payment Security Infrastructure

IDC Analysis: Is There a Play for OpenAI in Agentic Commerce?

Is there a play for OpenAI in agentic commerce?

OpenAI's push into agentic commerce reveals structural limits. Explore why data ownership—not interfaces—will define winners in AI-driven commerce.

Research firm IDC has published an analysis report on OpenAI's agentic commerce strategy. The report examines the structural constraints OpenAI faces, arguing that "data ownership matters more than interfaces."

Read alongside yesterday's OpenAI checkout scale-back news, this provides a fuller picture of the challenges AI platform companies face in the commerce domain. The insight that winners in agentic commerce will be determined not just by "AI performance" but by "access to purchasing data" carries important implications for e-commerce operators.

Full article: IDC Analysis: Is There a Play for OpenAI in Agentic Commerce?

AI Commerce Tools

Why AI Shopping Is Still Just a Smarter Search Bar

Why AI Shopping Is Still Just a Smarter Search Bar | PYMNTS.com

More than a year ago, I asked AI to help me buy a toaster. Not to browse. I knew exactly what I wanted, down to the brand, and I gave the LLM every detail.

PYMNTS has published an article analyzing the limitations of current AI shopping experiences. Starting from the real-world experience of "trying to get AI to buy a toaster," the piece argues that LLM-based shopping assistants have yet to move beyond being "smarter search bars."

While expectations for agentic commerce continue to grow, the actual purchasing experience requires multi-step processing — inventory checks, price comparisons, and payment execution — and current AI cannot handle these end-to-end.

Full article: Why AI Shopping Is Still Just a Smarter Search Bar

Walmart vs Target — Comparing AI Shopping Tool Strategies

Walmart and Target Are Battling to Show Up in AI Shopping Tools—Here's How Their Strategies Compare

Breaking down the cases for homegrown tech vs. partnerships.

Adweek has published a comparative analysis of Walmart and Target's AI shopping tool strategies. Walmart is pushing in-house technology development, while Target is taking an approach that leverages external partnerships.

The article presents contrasting approaches from America's two largest retailers on the fundamental strategic choice of "in-house development vs. partnerships," offering valuable perspectives for e-commerce operators globally.

Full article: Walmart vs Target AI Shopping Tool Strategy Comparison

Costco Adds AI Onsite Ads to Retail Media Network

Costco's Retail Media Network Adds AI Onsite Ads

Retailer to use Moloco's deep learning technology to set the digital end-cap

Costco is introducing AI-powered onsite ads to its retail media network, leveraging Moloco's deep learning technology. The move combines the membership retailer's rich purchasing data with AI to enhance onsite ad personalization.

This case demonstrates how retail media sophistication is becoming an established new revenue stream for major retailers.

Corporate Developments & Partnerships

Amazon Expands Shop Direct with Three New Partners

Amazon expands Shop Direct with three new partners

Shop Direct takes people directly to a brand's website to make a purchase, and Amazon wants it to be the place where every shopping journey begins, even if it ends elsewhere.

Amazon has added three new partners to its "Shop Direct" program. Shop Direct is a feature that directs users from Amazon to a brand's official website to make a purchase, embodying Amazon's strategy of becoming "the starting point for every shopping journey."

This is a notable move by Amazon to strengthen its position as a shopping hub beyond being just a marketplace.

Ingenico and Visa Collaborate to Accelerate Unified Commerce

Ingenico and Visa Collaborate to Accelerate Unified Commerce Solutions Across Industries

Ingenico and Visa partner to accelerate unified commerce experiences globally

POS terminal leader Ingenico and Visa have announced a partnership to advance unified commerce experiences. The collaboration aims to seamlessly integrate online and offline payment experiences, providing consumers with a consistent purchasing experience regardless of channel.

Logistics & Fulfillment

Maersk Launches Fully Automated Logistics Hub in Singapore

Maersk launches fully automated Singapore hub for faster shipments to Southeast Asia

The Straits Times - Get latest breaking news, business, sports, lifestyle, tech & multimedia and more news in Singapore, Asia & rest of the world at straitstimes.com.

Shipping giant Maersk has opened a fully automated logistics hub in Singapore. The facility, designed to accelerate shipments to Southeast Asia, features comprehensive deployment of automated sorting, robotics, and AI-powered inventory management.

As cross-border e-commerce expands, faster and more efficient fulfillment to Southeast Asia has become a critical theme, and Maersk's investment exemplifies this trend.

Other Notable News

Amazon Ads Integrates Spotify Ad Inventory

Amazon Ads integrates Spotify inventory to boost programmatic reach in Australia - MARKETECH APAC

Amazon Ads partners Spotify to offer Australian advertisers programmatic access to audio and video inventory via Amazon DSP.

Amazon Ads has enabled programmatic delivery of Spotify's audio and video ad inventory via Amazon DSP. The rollout has initially launched in Australia.

The integration of streaming media inventory by an e-commerce advertising platform signals the expanding scope of retail media. There is potential for purchase data-based targeting to be applied to streaming ads as well.

Summary

Today's news strongly underscores the rapid pace of agentic commerce infrastructure development. The Visa-Stripe protocol collaboration and the F5-Skyfire security infrastructure demonstrate that multiple companies are simultaneously building "environments where AI agents can actually execute payments."

However, as PYMNTS' analysis and the IDC report point out, the reality of AI shopping has yet to move beyond "a smarter search bar," and there is still considerable distance to truly agentic purchasing experiences. Walmart's departure from OpenAI and Sparky in-housing signals that the battle for dominance in this space is intensifying.

Going forward, watch for how other payment networks respond to the Visa-Stripe protocol, and follow-up reports on user experience following Walmart's Sparky integration.