Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal Bet Big on AI Agents 🤖.

We’ve gone from lining up in stores to letting bots shop for us… and somehow, it all feels normal now 🤖🛒

Hi there, and welcome to another issue of The Ecom Press 🗞️!

Agentic commerce isn’t just making a buzz; it’s evolving fast. Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal are rolling out features that let AI do the buying for you, while Amazon just turned your favorite shows into a product catalog. Across borders, tariffs continue to stir things up 🌪️! 

Let’s take a deep dive, shall we ☺️?

In a rush? Here's the juice🤭:

🤖 Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal bet big on AI agents.

💻 Amazon turns streaming into shopping with ‘Shop the Show’.

🚢 What happened this week in the Trump tariff saga.

🚀 Ecom Strategies: 5 Smart Ways to Prep for Agentic Shopping

⚡️Worthy Mentions

🤖 Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal bet big on AI agents.

Last week, Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal all unveiled their visions for agentic AI-powered commerce. These updates aim to integrate AI agents into real-world shopping and payment workflows, from discovery to checkout, with a focus on trust, security, and scale.

Here’s the lowdown ⬇️:

🔵 Visa: Intelligent Commerce Infrastructure for AI Agents

Visa unveiled Visa Intelligent Commerce, a platform that allows AI agents to find, select, and pay for items on behalf of users. The system emphasizes secure, user-controlled transactions, supported by Visa’s global payment infrastructure. Key components include:

• AI-Ready Cards: Tokenized credentials linked to users and their AI agents, verifying agent identity and enabling secure payments

• Personalized Controls: Consumers can set spend limits and define agent permissions

• Real-Time Commerce Signals: Transaction data flows through Visa’s network to manage fraud, identity, and disputes

• Developer APIs and Partner Program: Visa offers integration tools for AI platforms, with early collaborators like OpenAI, Microsoft, Stripe, and Samsung

Visa positions this system as a foundational layer for agentic commerce, combining personalization with decades of payment security expertise.

🟣 Mastercard: Agent Pay Enables Secure, Tokenized Agentic Transactions

Mastercard launched Agent Pay, its new agentic payments program, built around secure digital tokens and conversational commerce integration. Here are the highlights:

• Agentic Tokens: Extend Mastercard’s tokenization to autonomous agents, supporting one-time purchases, subscriptions, and B2B transactions

• Consumer Verification and Control: Users register trusted agents and set clear purchase boundaries, backed by biometric security and fraud monitoring

• Platform Collaboration: Working with Microsoft (Azure OpenAI), IBM (watsonx), and payment partners like Braintree and Checkout.com

• End-to-End Transparency: All agentic transactions are tagged and recognizable across the commerce chain

Mastercard’s rollout focuses on both consumer applications and enterprise use cases, aiming to scale agentic commerce across different channels and regions.

🟡 PayPal: Developer Tools and APIs for Agentic Commerce Integration

PayPal introduced its agentic AI strategy at its Dev Days event and Q1 earnings call, positioning itself as the infrastructure provider for developers building autonomous commerce experiences. These are the key announcements:

• PayPal Agent Toolkit: A new suite of APIs and modular tools enabling developers to embed PayPal capabilities into AI agents

• MCP Server: First-of-its-kind remote server that simplifies agent integration with PayPal’s existing payment infrastructure

• Real-World Demonstrations:

  • Google Cloud: AI shopping companion integrated with PayPal checkout

  • AWS: Real-time product digitization and campaign generation

  • Microsoft Azure: Personalized, AI-powered shopping flows

• Full-Stack Capabilities: PayPal’s platform now supports the entire commerce lifecycle, from listing and payments to shipping, dispute resolution, and reordering, all accessible to AI agents

PayPal’s focus is on accelerating adoption among developers and enabling merchants to plug into agentic ecosystems with speed and confidence.

Why it matters 🤔

We’re currently witnessing a race to own the infrastructure behind autonomous ecommerce. While Visa and Mastercard are staking out trusted payment rails, PayPal is giving developers the tools to build on top of those rails. The opportunity here lies in how brands generally respond because beyond product visibility, integration with these agents will make all the difference for conversion 🤑.

💻 Amazon turns streaming into shopping with ‘Shop the Show’.

Amazon is turning viewers into shoppers with its new Shop the Show feature. Being a second-screen experience, it lets Prime Video users buy products related to what they’re watching, in real time, without hitting pause.

Here are the deets ⬇️:

Shop What You Watch: Available in the U.S. across over 1,300 titles, Shop the Show lets users browse and buy items like LEGO sets and collectibles, character-themed toys, apparel worn by actors, and home goods connected to shows, movies, and live sports on Prime Video.

How It Works

• Watch something on Prime Video

• Open the Amazon Shopping app on your phone

• Search “shop the show”

• If the title is eligible, a shopping page tailored to that content appears

• Products can be browsed and purchased without interrupting the show

Content Categories Included: From Fallout and Barbie, to Star Wars and Wicked, plus sporting events like NASCAR and NWSL, the feature covers a wide range of content. Even if you're not watching at home, the function still works via mobile.

Always-On Shopping: Shop the Show isn’t limited to active streaming. It works:

• Before or after watching

• For titles you’ve streamed within the last 30 days

• As a standalone browsing tool for exploring franchise merch anytime

Why it matters 🤷‍♂️

When fans are most emotionally connected to what they’re watching may be one of the strongest moments for impulse buying. Instead of hoping people Google a product later, Amazon is closing the gap between discovery and purchase in real time.

Certainly, emotional attention may be the next gold mine, and if your product can ride the wave of pop culture, you may want to get strategic about placement, licensing, or co-branding.

🚢 What happened this week in the Trump tariff saga.

Here’s your quick rundown of the latest in the U.S.–China tariff saga and how it’s continuing to shake up global ecommerce, logistics, and supply chains:

📦 DHL Restarts High-Value Shipments

• On April 28, DHL resumed international shipments to the U.S. valued over $800 after a temporary pause due to customs complications.

• The restart follows new customs allowances for expedited clearance between $800 and $2,500.

• Delays may still occur as DHL works through backlogs.

📬 De Minimis Tariff Rule Kicks In

• As of May 2, the U.S. officially scrapped duty-free status for small parcels from China and Hong Kong.

• Parcels now face a 90% tariff or $75 per item, rising to $150 on June 1.

• Platforms like Temu and Shein saw immediate cost hikes and shipment volume from China fell by up to 30%.

💊 Trump Eyes Pharma Tariffs

• On May 5–6, Trump hinted at tariffs on pharmaceutical ingredients from China and India during a Michigan rally.

• No formal plan has been filed yet, but generics manufacturers raised concerns over disruptions.

• Pharma stocks dipped 3–5% following the announcement.

🤝 U.S.–China Trade Talks Are Back

• On May 6, both nations confirmed that trade negotiations will resume May 9–12 in Switzerland.

• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and USTR Jamieson Greer will meet Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng.

• Officials suggest the focus will be on easing tensions rather than hammering out a full deal.

🚢 Supply Chain Pressures Continue

• Shipments from China to the U.S. remained 40% below pre-tariff levels.

• Businesses are renegotiating contracts and passing costs to consumers as rates and delays stack up.

🛎️ The Ecom Press Insider

Ecom Fact: Did you know that as of March 2025, 66% of shoppers are eager to use AI agents to snag high-demand products before they vanish and 65% want agents to auto-buy when prices drop. And brands are catching on fast: 75% of retailers believe these agents will be essential by 2026 (Salesforce’s Connected Shoppers Report).

The checkout line is going autonomous. If 3 out of 4 retailers are betting on AI agents, your brand can’t afford to sit this one out.

🚀 Ecom Strategies: 5 Smart Ways to Prep for Agentic Shopping

From ChatGPT recommending products to agents placing orders on your behalf, the future of ecommerce is autonomous, intelligent, and already underway. If you’re still optimizing only for Google, you’re playing catch-up.

Here are 5 practical strategies to future-proof your brand for AISEO and agentic commerce 🛠️👇

🛍️ 1. Make Your Store Speak AI: Structure your site using schema markup (like JSON-LD) so AI agents can read your product pages just like humans do. Add FAQs, comparison tables, and listicles as these formats are agent-friendly and increase your chance of being recommended.

📣 2. Get Listed Where Agents Look: AI pulls product info from high-authority platforms, like Google Merchant Center, Amazon, Etsy, and even Crunchbase. Keep your brand profiles updated across these sources so you show up when agents go hunting.

🧩 3. Automate Smart SEO Tasks: Let AI do the heavy lifting. Use agentic tools to generate descriptions, meta tags, and schema, and target transactional keywords like “buy under $50” or “top-rated earbuds 2025.” This is how AI responds to user intent, not just keywords.

🔒 4. Build Trust Signals for AI: AI agents care about trust and authority. So get your brand mentioned in reputable publications, stay active on social media, and engage in user-led forums like Reddit and Quora. These signals boost credibility for both humans and machines.

🔗 5. Plug Into the AI Ecosystem: Expose your inventory, pricing, and shipping info via public APIs so agents can access it in real-time. Keep your chatbots trained and ready because they might just be your next customer-facing AI partner.

Ultimately, staying ahead demands that you treat AI like a customer, collaborator, and sales channel all in one. Optimize for the way machines actually discover and buy, and your store will not only ride the wave but thrive in it 🚀.

⚡️Worthy Mentions

• Trump vows to extend TikTok ban until U.S. ownership deal is finalized.

• Pinterest supercharges Visual Search with new AI-powered features.

• Lowe’s rolls out AI assistant to all stores, empowering associates chainwide.

• Meta launches standalone Meta AI app to rival ChatGPT.

• Instagram’s Edits app surpasses 7 million downloads in first week, outpacing CapCut.

Wrapping up…

AI in ecommerce is blazing⚡! Before you type the next prompt, there’s a new feature, platform, or protocol changing how we shop 🛒.

This week alone, we saw the kind of innovation that transforms entertainment from just content to an actual storefront, thanks to Amazon. 

Like we say, optimize fast for these changes or get left behind. 

We’ll be back next week with the latest buzz, but for now, stay curious, and smash that subscribe button like it owes you money 💥.