Agentic commerce research.
Articles on shopping agents, checkout protocols, merchant checks, and order records.
Amazon blocked Meta’s Muse and Shopify let it check out. Here’s what merchants should check.
Amazon blocked Meta’s Muse for shopping without identifying itself. A day later Shopify opened Shop Pay checkout to Muse, on by default for eligible stores. The Shopify merchant answers any chargeback, and we found no documentation that the customer’s approval reaches them. Three checks to run in the Shopify admin.
Read articleA Tool Call Is Not an Authorization
WebMCP gives a browser agent a clean way to ask a merchant page for a checkout. It says nothing about who is asking or whether they can spend the money. Here is how we split that into a read-only preflight and a server-side decision — and the three pieces that are not finished.
Read articleAuthorization Needs an Outcome Record
A valid agent credential proves that a request carried an authorization claim. It does not prove what the merchant decided or how the transaction ended. KYA’s Phase 0 design records those facts as one issuer-neutral, append-only evidence chain.
Read articleThe Agent Was Authorized. The Purchase Wasn't.
A legitimate customer can authorize a legitimate agent and still dispute the purchase it makes. We separate agentic authorization mismatch from authorized agentic fraud, and show what merchants actually need to check at checkout.
Read articleMandate Matching and Evidence Receipts for Agent Checkout
How to check an agent-initiated purchase against the mandate its principal granted: normalize the mandate, match it field by field, treat "not specified" as not allowed, decide accept/review/decline/step-up, and write a signed evidence receipt your dispute tooling can replay. Written for merchant architecture teams, with the API contract, policy config, and schemas.
Read articleReview agent checkout decisions in the merchant dashboard
When your verification system says "review this agent," you now have somewhere to do it. The Trust Operations Console gives risk teams one screen for review, approvals, and live activity — and the Agent Passport gives every agent a track record you can actually read.
Read article2026: The Year of the Agent, and the Year of the Breach
Qualcomm called 2026 the year of the agent. Experian named agentic AI the top emerging breach vector. Both were right. Halfway through the year, here is what actually changed, what didn't, and the three things likely to bite next.
Read articleAP2 mandate checks in KYA
Google donated AP2 to the FIDO Alliance and v0.2 added a Human-Not-Present mode for autonomous agents. We shipped a translation layer so a KYA trace JWT now produces an AP2 Open Checkout Mandate + Open Payment Mandate that AP2-aware merchants and processors can consume without bespoke integration.
Read articleAmazon vs. Perplexity: The First Major Legal Battle Over AI Agents Shopping on Your Behalf
A federal court just told an AI agent it cannot log into your Amazon account and buy things for you. The ruling could shape the legal foundation of agentic commerce and every merchant needs to understand what it means.
Read articleThe Architecture of Autonomy: Walmart's Sparky and the Emergence of Agentic Commerce
Walmart is not adding AI to its shopping experience. It is replacing the shopping experience with AI. Sparky, Wallaby, and the Element platform represent a full-stack rewrite of how retail works from search to checkout to fulfillment. Here is what is actually happening under the hood.
Read articleJust-in-Time Interfaces and the Threat of Perfect Competition
An analysis of how agent-generated interfaces could change product discovery, price comparison, and the role of a merchant website.
Read articleCoinbase Agentic Wallets and merchant checkout checks
An agent wallet can hold funds and send payments. Merchants still need to check the agent’s identity and purchase permission.
Read articleHow retailers are building shopping agents
The retail landscape has fragmented into three strategies to counter Rufus: proprietary super-agents (Walmart), open alliances (Google/Target), and outright bans (eBay). Here is who is doing what and why.
Read articleAmazon Rufus: How Auto-Buy Actually Works and Why It Matters
Rufus went from chatbot to checkout in 18 months. It now auto-buys on price triggers, handles third-party DTC checkout, and sells ad placements inside AI conversations. Here is what is actually going on under the hood.
Read articleHeadless Checkout for AI Agents: The API Contract Merchants Need
Agents need a deterministic, API-first way to complete purchases. Headless checkout pairs delegated authorization with transaction guardrails so merchants can accept agent orders without manual review.
Read articleWhen fraud checks reject shopping agents
How agent traffic can differ from human shopping sessions, and which checks merchants can add before accepting an order.
Read articleAgent checkout needs verifiable records
KYA ships signed traces, verify recommendations, checkout-session enforcement, and pre-dispute APIs for agent checkout.
Read articleFollow the systems behind agent traffic, not the headlines about it.
Technical analysis for the merchants, platforms, and operators who will have to run this in production.
