As AI reshapes the shopping experience, how much time does PayPal have left?

Original title: AI: PayPal's $200M Wake-Up Call in AI Commerce

Original author: LUKE SPILL, FintechBlueprint

Compiled by: Peggy, BlockBeats

Editor's Note: As AI agents begin to replace humans in product discovery, decision-making, and order placement, the traditional e-commerce funnel is being rapidly compressed, and payment is no longer the end point of a transaction, but rather part of the embedded infrastructure. This article uses PayPal's acquisition of Cymbio as a starting point to outline the new competitive landscape under the rise of Agentic Commerce: Google and Shopify are attempting to control the routing layer with UCP, OpenAI and Stripe are seizing the agent execution layer through ACP, and PayPal is striving to shift from a "payment button" to a key node in the "business workflow."

For fintech companies like PayPal and Stripe, the ability to embed the underlying protocols of AI commerce will determine whether they can continue to play their part; and for the banking and crypto industries, the window of opportunity is equally short.

The following is the original text:

Last week, PayPal acquired Cymbio, a platform that helps merchants complete sales across various AI interfaces, including Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity. Market sources estimate the deal is worth between $150 million and $200 million. This is widely seen as a key strategic move by PayPal to remain competitive in the Agentic Commerce sector.

Therefore, as AI agents continue to compress and restructure the traditional e-commerce funnel, PayPal is shifting from a typical Web2 payment tool to more upstream and core business processes such as product discovery, catalog distribution, and order orchestration. This shift almost perfectly confirms our analysis in January of this year regarding exponential growth, power-law effects, and increasing returns to scale in Agentic Commerce.

At the same time, the industry's infrastructure is rapidly taking shape:

Google and Shopify are pushing for the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP).

OpenAI and Stripe are working together to advance the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP).

Microsoft, on the other hand, has directly embedded its settlement capabilities into Copilot.

The shopping infrastructure built around "machines," rather than "human users," is being rewritten at an unprecedented pace. Agentic Commerce is delivering on exponential growth expectations in a real-world manner. The predictions from various parties are both astonishing and converging:

McKinsey predicts that by the end of this decade, Agentic Commerce is expected to generate $1 trillion in revenue in the US retail market, accounting for about one-third of all online retail sales.

Morgan Stanley predicts that by 2030, Agentic Commerce will drive U.S. e-commerce spending to $190 billion to $385 billion, representing a market penetration rate of 10%–20%.

Bain predicts that by 2030, the market size of Agentic Commerce will reach $300 billion to $500 billion, accounting for approximately 15%–25% of total online retail sales.

Current data suggests that we are at the inflection point of an exponential growth curve: by November 2025, 23% of US consumers will have used AI to complete a purchase.

Cymbio could become PayPal's "middle layer" in AI business.

For PayPal, Cymbio's potential positioning is as a middle infrastructure layer in the AI ​​business ecosystem. Its core value proposition includes:

Synchronize product catalogs across different markets and channels

Real-time inventory availability management

Orders are routed to the merchant's existing OMS (Order Management System) and fulfillment system.

Allow the merchant to continue to act as the legal entity of the transaction (Merchant of Record).

Among them, the Store Sync product allows merchants' product catalogs to be directly discovered by AI agents such as Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity, and it is expected to be integrated with ChatGPT and Google Gemini in the next step.

The reason why AI agents can complete transactions is that the product data, prices, inventory and fulfillment information must be machine-readable and highly reliable.

From "Checkout" to "Agentic Commerce Workflow"

PayPal processes over $1.7 trillion in payments annually and has over 142 million monthly active accounts. In the traditional model, PayPal's core leverage point is the moment the payment occurs.

In the Agentic Commerce system, the AI ​​system can help users discover products, compare options, and even place orders directly, while PayPal is responsible for identity verification and payment authorization.

After integrating Cymbio, PayPal now covers the entire value chain:

Discovery: Products are recommended and presented by the AI ​​agent.

Decision-making: Continuously convergence of options through conversational interaction.

Checkout: PayPal handles identity verification and payment.

Fulfilment: Orders are directly injected into the merchant's system for execution.

Protocol Dispute: Service vs. Standard

While PayPal is advancing Agentic Commerce as a "product and service," Google and Shopify are building a cross-functional, standardized Agentic Commerce protocol framework.

The key point is:

Google is embedding UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol) directly into search and Gemini.

Shopify ensures that its millions of merchants can reach multiple AI agents with just one integration.

This means that the underlying infrastructure for AI business is evolving from "single-point capabilities" to "protocol-based networks".

UCP's goal is to control the "routing layer" of AI business, rather than directly owning or operating the business itself.

This is more like a defensive strategy: by making this layer a "free" public protocol and introducing strong network effects, it prevents any single adversary from monopolizing core control of the AI ​​business system.

Therefore, PayPal is not competing head-on with UCP, but rather actively embedding itself into the system.

Google has made it clear that the UCP-based checkout capability will support a variety of payment service providers, including PayPal and Google Pay.

In other words, UCP is trying to be a "neutral highway," while PayPal hopes to be an indispensable tollbooth and payment node on this highway.

OpenAI and Stripe are the main competitors in this field.

Back in September, Stripe and OpenAI announced the launch of Instant Checkout in ChatGPT, which is powered by the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP).

ACP allows AI agents to proactively initiate purchase requests via a structured API, with Stripe issuing shared payment tokens to confirm payments under agent authorization. This enables the AI, once authorized, to complete the entire transaction process on behalf of the user, from order placement to payment.

Stripe subsequently launched the Agentic Commerce Suite in December 2025, enabling merchants to:

Publish a product catalog for direct access by the AI ​​agent.

Independently choose which AI agents to use for sales.

Process payments, risk control, and dispute resolution with Stripe

Send order events back to the existing business system

Stripe processed over $1 trillion in payments in 2024, serving millions of businesses worldwide. Its competitive strategy is very clear: to become the "default wallet" and "action execution layer" for AI agents—a path highly similar to its early days as the default payment API for internet companies.

Against this backdrop, PayPal and Stripe are clearly going head-to-head:

The two are not just fighting over the payment itself, but over the key control points when the AI ​​agent actually "executes the transaction".

Comparing the three systems together.

(This usually involves a cross-reference between UCP / ACP / PayPal + Cymbio:)

Who controls the routing layer, who controls the protocol, who controls payment and fulfillment—and the sources of their respective network effects?

If you'd like, I can help you organize the next paragraph into a comparison table or a highly summarized "strategic assessment," clearly explaining the division of labor and the game between the three parties in one go.

Key Takeaways

Three aspects have a particularly prominent impact:

Business transactions will become conversational and can be executed by agents.

The purchase process is no longer a step-by-step click-through process for users, but rather AI understands the needs through dialogue and completes the purchase on behalf of the user with authorization.

Merchants can "integrate once and distribute everywhere".

Merchants do not need to adapt to each platform individually; they only need to complete the integration once, and their products can reach users through multiple AI agents and channels.

Payments will become embedded infrastructure, rather than the endpoint of transactions.

Payment is no longer a "last-minute button," but a fundamental capability deeply embedded in the discovery, decision-making, and fulfillment processes.

Proactive measures for payment networks

Incidentally, Mastercard announced in January 2026 that it was researching "AI Business Rules," which is essentially an attempt to take the lead in defining the governance framework for this transformation.

Payment networks clearly recognize that the power to set rules and standards will determine their future position before AI agents can complete transactions on a large scale.

As we pointed out in our analysis in January of this year: banks, fintech companies and the crypto industry must ensure that they are "sitting at the table" rather than being included after the fact.

If financial institutions fail to embed themselves into these platforms in advance, their financial functions may ultimately be internalized by Big Tech.

The Situation and Choices of Different Factions

For Banks

Traditional banks lack the technological infrastructure to directly compete with Google, OpenAI, or Microsoft at the Agentic Commerce level. However, they still possess three key resources: payment clearing channels, customer credit relationships, and compliance and regulatory experience.

These assets mean the bank won't disappear, but it must be repositioned.

For Fintechs

Companies like PayPal, Stripe, and Adyen realized early on that simply focusing on payments was no longer enough to solidify their long-term position.

Therefore, they are proactively moving upstream, entering: commerce orchestration, merchant services, and the infrastructure layer of the AI ​​era.

For the crypto industry (For Crypto)

The Agentic Commerce protocol system that has been released so far is almost entirely based on traditional financial pathways: credit cards, Google Pay, PayPal, Stripe, and others occupy the core positions.

Cryptocurrencies and stablecoins are largely absent from UCP, ACP, and Store Sync, except for a few sporadic experiments involving Stripe or Coinbase.

Whether this was a major strategic oversight or a deliberate exclusion remains to be seen.

For crypto companies, the window of opportunity is very clear: if they can build a payment track that is natively adapted to AI agents (instant settlement, programmable money, global availability) and successfully embed it into the AI ​​platform before the protocol is fully solidified, they may be able to achieve a leapfrog development over traditional finance; otherwise, they may be permanently excluded from the system.

Conclusion

Fundamentally, PayPal is striving to catch up with Stripe and adapt to rapidly changing consumer behavior.

As people increasingly make daily decisions on AI platforms, these platforms will gradually evolve into "default virtual showcases" for brands.

Whoever can embed themselves in the infrastructure behind these shop windows will be able to stay at the poker table.

PayPal's stock price has been sluggish for some time, down about 37% from its 52-week high. Investors have been questioning whether the company still has structural relevance in the long run, and the rise of the Crypto + AI narrative has only exacerbated these concerns.

In this context, the diversification efforts surrounding Agentic Commerce are not an aggressive move, but rather a "necessary cost" to maintain relevance. For PayPal, this is not icing on the cake, but an entry fee that must be paid: only by completing this shift can it remain at the core of the next generation of commerce infrastructure.