Stripe’s AI Shopping Lead Puts Card Giants on Edge

[The Information] According to people close to the credit card companies, as AI assistants such as Instinct and Meta Platforms' Muse gain traction in shopping scenarios, Stripe has taken a leading position in how AI agents complete payments, which is unsettling the credit card giants. These people said that in many cases Stripe supports AI agent shopping through one-time virtual cards, which could weaken the card networks' control over the shopping and payment process. Mastercard and Visa have developed their own agentic shopping payment technologies that will use customers' existing cards, giving the card companies more insight into who is buying what, but that approach is still at an early stage.