Mastercard vs Stripe

Mastercard advances agentic commerce with new trust and intelligence services

Mastercard launches Wallet Pay to scale digital wallets worldwide, completes acquisition of BVNK, and launches $500 million global risk facility with World Bank Group.

AI Agents Emerge as Key Holiday Shoppers

At The Advertising Club of New York's Commerce Media Exchange Conference, executives from Wevo, Dentsu, and Mastercard discussed the growing influence of AI agents on commerce and advertising. Nitzan Shaer, CEO of Wevo, cited Adobe data showing that 20% of holiday shopping experiences in 2025 were influenced by AI agents, with conversion rates 40% higher for agent-influenced purchases by March 2026. Jen Bryce of Dentsu highlighted the shift from search bars to agents pre-filtering options and the use of AI agents for continuous media planning and optimization. Nili Klenoff of Mastercard emphasized the importance of brand trust and product data legibility for agents. The panel also covered the use of synthetic audiences for campaign testing, balancing automation with human judgment, and the need for marketers to measure agent-driven traffic separately.

• 20% of 2025 holiday shopping experiences were influenced by AI agents, according to Adobe data cited by Wevo's CEO.
• Agent-influenced purchases converted about 40% better than non-agent traffic by March 2026.
• Dentsu uses AI agents for continuous media buying optimization, replanning within hours or days instead of weeks.

Shoppers Cautious About AI Holiday Shopping, Sinch Study Finds

A new study by Sinch across eight markets with 2,501 consumers reveals that fewer shoppers believe AI will make holiday shopping easier, dropping from 48% in 2025 to 43% in 2026. Trust in human advice over AI increased to 53%. Data privacy remains the top concern (43%). Consumers are most willing to delegate order tracking and shipping updates (48%), product research (47%), and customer service (36%). Despite consumer caution, 63% of retailers have deployed AI customer communication agents. The findings suggest that AI gimmicks risk alienating shoppers, while high-quality authentic content remains crucial for affiliates.

• Sinch surveyed 2,501 consumers across eight markets.
• 43% of shoppers believe AI will make holiday shopping easier, down from 48% in 2025.
• 53% trust advice from a real person more than AI, up from 51% in 2025.

Constructor Launches Agentic Checkout Powered by Stripe

Constructor, a product discovery platform for the agentic era, has launched Agentic Checkout, integrating Stripe to enable shoppers—both humans and AI agents—to discover and purchase products within a single conversational interface. This new functionality eliminates the friction of leaving an AI agent to complete a purchase on a traditional checkout page. Available globally, it is the first Stripe-powered checkout directly within an onsite shopping agent. Shoppers can pay via Link by Stripe, used by 250 million customers, or other payment methods. The feature is initially available within Constructor's AI Shopping Agent and AI Product Insights Agent, with expansion planned across additional touchpoints. Adoption of Constructor's AI agents has surged, with a 900% increase in deploying companies over the past year, reflecting the growing shift toward agentic commerce.

• Constructor launched Agentic Checkout, integrating Stripe.
• Available globally, it is the first Stripe-powered checkout within an onsite shopping agent.
• Shoppers can pay via Link by Stripe, used by 250 million customers.

OUSD is now the default stablecoin on Stripe

Open USD (OUSD), a stablecoin built for global money movement, is now available across Stripe. Businesses can use OUSD to manage funds, make payments, and offer new financial services.

OpenRouter's Journey from Seed to Stripe: AI's Neutral Distribution Layer

In this podcast episode, OpenRouter co-founder and CEO Alex Atallah and AMP's Anjney Midha discuss the company's evolution from an early bet on multi-model AI to a critical infrastructure layer serving over 10 million developers and processing 10+ trillion tokens daily. They highlight the challenges of convincing VCs that OpenRouter was more than a 'wrapper', the strategic focus on being a neutral distribution layer, and the importance of community building, especially through Discord. The conversation covers the Mistral price war, the development of model fusion, and the rise of agentic fraud as a key threat. Finally, they explain why Stripe acquired OpenRouter, emphasizing the strategic fit around fraud prevention and the vision of securing the emerging token economy.

• OpenRouter serves over 10 million developers and processes over 10 trillion tokens per day.
• OpenRouter was acquired by Stripe; the exact deal amount was not disclosed.
• OpenRouter grew to 10+ trillion tokens per day, with 9% weekly growth in token volume.