The current purchasing agents (Muse and Dots) will not survive.
In the end, Apple and Google will be the agents as part of Siri/iOS and Gemini/Android.
Apple Siri has access to all the personal information on your phone and can pay with Apple pay which solves the problem you noted.
Google Android can get access to everything on an Android phone and have the user pay with Google pay.
Consumers are already comfortable using Apple Pay and Google Pay. I own a bakery with multiple locations. Our web set accepts Apple Pay and Google Pay.
I get why Meta, OpenAI, Shopify, Stripe, Mastercard, Link, Shop Pay, PayPal, etc are trying jump into the game. I'm guessing medium and large enterprise, will develop their own version of Muse. But in the end, people do most of their shopping on an iphone/mac or Android/Chrome browser platform.
Your article is an evaluation of AI as a product that companies are trying to use to develop a niche. AI is not a product, its a technology. Apple's implementation of Siri is the right answer assuming they can get it to work (which I'm pretty confident they can). Google will do the same with Gemini on Android although they will have a challenge on promoting privacy given they are behind on a hardware platform that can support local AI.
In the mean time, purchasing agents will be a wild west experiment that Apple and Google will use to tune their implementation.
One additional point, Muse works fine with my web site. Including with users who already have an account and credit card on my web site. Users will want to log into my web site so they can get loyalty points. Can Muse (like Doordash et al) create a loyalty system that user prefer over my loyalty system. That's a more interesting question. Apple currently does not have a loyalty system using Apple Pay and neither does Google using Google Pay. I personally believe the war on where loyalty rewards accrue is the more interesting topic.
The split between helping my agent pay and letting it transact as me is the part I hadn't separated before. Loyalty is a good test of it, because points only follow the person the merchant believes is on the other side.
Terry, excellent distinction between enabling an agent to pay and enabling it to transact on someone's behalf.
There's a third distinction worth examining: a valid credential and an initially authorized mandate do not necessarily establish that authority remains valid at the moment of execution.
What happens when the user's instructions change, authority is partially consumed or revoked, or an agent selects a payment route that satisfies the transaction but violates the user's underlying conditions?
Tokenization establishes important controls, but the broader challenge is maintaining authority continuity across agents, wallets, merchants and payment intermediaries—with a reconstructable record of what was authorized, what changed and why execution proceeded.
This is the problem we're exploring through VNet™ at Persistence Analytics Group.
Authority before execution. Evidence after the event.
The current purchasing agents (Muse and Dots) will not survive.
In the end, Apple and Google will be the agents as part of Siri/iOS and Gemini/Android.
Apple Siri has access to all the personal information on your phone and can pay with Apple pay which solves the problem you noted.
Google Android can get access to everything on an Android phone and have the user pay with Google pay.
Consumers are already comfortable using Apple Pay and Google Pay. I own a bakery with multiple locations. Our web set accepts Apple Pay and Google Pay.
I get why Meta, OpenAI, Shopify, Stripe, Mastercard, Link, Shop Pay, PayPal, etc are trying jump into the game. I'm guessing medium and large enterprise, will develop their own version of Muse. But in the end, people do most of their shopping on an iphone/mac or Android/Chrome browser platform.
Your article is an evaluation of AI as a product that companies are trying to use to develop a niche. AI is not a product, its a technology. Apple's implementation of Siri is the right answer assuming they can get it to work (which I'm pretty confident they can). Google will do the same with Gemini on Android although they will have a challenge on promoting privacy given they are behind on a hardware platform that can support local AI.
In the mean time, purchasing agents will be a wild west experiment that Apple and Google will use to tune their implementation.
One additional point, Muse works fine with my web site. Including with users who already have an account and credit card on my web site. Users will want to log into my web site so they can get loyalty points. Can Muse (like Doordash et al) create a loyalty system that user prefer over my loyalty system. That's a more interesting question. Apple currently does not have a loyalty system using Apple Pay and neither does Google using Google Pay. I personally believe the war on where loyalty rewards accrue is the more interesting topic.
The split between helping my agent pay and letting it transact as me is the part I hadn't separated before. Loyalty is a good test of it, because points only follow the person the merchant believes is on the other side.
Excellent posts. We’re working on agentic ID solutions for wallet transactions at @soulboundsecurity
Terry, excellent distinction between enabling an agent to pay and enabling it to transact on someone's behalf.
There's a third distinction worth examining: a valid credential and an initially authorized mandate do not necessarily establish that authority remains valid at the moment of execution.
What happens when the user's instructions change, authority is partially consumed or revoked, or an agent selects a payment route that satisfies the transaction but violates the user's underlying conditions?
Tokenization establishes important controls, but the broader challenge is maintaining authority continuity across agents, wallets, merchants and payment intermediaries—with a reconstructable record of what was authorized, what changed and why execution proceeded.
This is the problem we're exploring through VNet™ at Persistence Analytics Group.
Authority before execution. Evidence after the event.
Neil P. Osnato
Founder | Persistence Analytics Group LLC