Original Title: AI: PayPal's $200M Wake-Up Call in AI Commerce
Original Author: LUKE SPILL, FintechBlueprint
Translation by: Peggy, BlockBeats
Editor's Note: As AI agents begin to replace humans in product discovery, decision-making, and ordering, the traditional e-commerce funnel is being rapidly compressed, and payment is no longer the endpoint of a transaction, but rather part of embedded infrastructure. This article uses PayPal's acquisition of Cymbio as a starting point to outline the new competitive landscape emerging under Agentic Commerce: Google and Shopify are trying to control the routing layer with UCP, OpenAI and Stripe are seizing the agent execution layer through ACP, while PayPal is striving to shift from a "payment button" to a critical node in "business workflows."
For fintech companies like PayPal and Stripe, whether they can embed themselves into the underlying protocols of AI commerce will determine if they can continue to sit at the table; similarly, for banks and the crypto industry, the window of opportunity is also brief.
Here 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 transaction to be between $150 million and $200 million. The general consensus is that this is a key strategic move by PayPal to remain competitive in the field of Agentic Commerce.
Thus, as AI agents continuously compress and reshape the traditional e-commerce funnel, PayPal is transitioning from a typical Web2 payment tool to more upstream and core business components such as product discovery, catalog distribution, and order orchestration. This transition almost completely validates our analysis from January this year regarding exponential growth, power law effects, and the increasing returns to scale within Agentic Commerce.
Meanwhile, 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 is embedding settlement capabilities directly into Copilot.
The shopping infrastructure oriented around "machines" rather than "human users" is being rewritten at an unprecedented speed. Agentic Commerce is realizing the expectations of exponential growth in a real-world manner. Predictions from various parties are both astonishing and beginning to converge:
McKinsey predicts that by the end of this decade, Agentic Commerce could generate $1 trillion in revenues in the U.S. retail market, accounting for about one-third of total online retail sales.
Morgan Stanley forecasts that by 2030, Agentic Commerce will drive U.S. e-commerce spending to between $190 billion and $385 billion, corresponding to 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, representing about 15%-25% of total online retail.
Existing adoption data indicates that we are at the inflection point of an exponential growth curve: by November 2025, 23% of U.S. consumers will have used AI to complete a purchase.
Cymbio may become PayPal's "Middle Layer" in AI Commerce
For PayPal, the potential positioning of Cymbio is as a middle infrastructure layer within the AI commerce ecosystem. Its core value propositions include:
Synchronizing product catalogs across different markets and channels
Real-time management of inventory availability
Routing orders to merchants' existing OMS (Order Management System) and fulfillment systems
Allowing merchants to continue as the legal entity of the transaction (Merchant of Record)
Among these, the Store Sync product allows merchants' catalogs to be discovered directly by AI agents like Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity, with plans to integrate ChatGPT and Google Gemini next.
The premise for AI agents to complete transactions is that product data, pricing, inventory, and fulfillment information must be machine-readable and highly reliable.
From "Checkout" to "Agentic Commerce Workflows"
PayPal processes over $1.7 trillion in total payments annually, with over 142 million monthly active accounts. In the traditional model, PayPal's core leverage point is at the moment of payment.
In the Agentic Commerce ecosystem, AI systems can perform product discovery, solution comparisons, and even place orders on behalf of users, while PayPal is responsible for authentication and payment authorization.
After integrating Cymbio, PayPal covers the complete link:
Discovery: Products recommended and presented within AI agents
Decisioning: Narrowing options through conversational interactions
Checkout: Authentication and payment completed by PayPal
Fulfillment: Orders directly injected into the merchant system for execution
Protocol Battle: Service vs Standards
As PayPal promotes Agentic Commerce in the form of "products and services," Google and Shopify are constructing a cross-functional, standardized Agentic Commerce protocol system.
The key lies in:
Google is embedding UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol) directly into Search and Gemini
Shopify ensures that its millions of merchants can integrate once and reach multiple AI agents
This means that the underlying infrastructure of AI commerce is evolving from "single-point capabilities" to "protocol networks."
The goal of UCP is to control the "routing layer" of AI commerce, 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 competitor from monopolizing the core control of the AI commerce system.
Thus, PayPal is not directly competing with UCP but is actively embedding itself within this system.
Google has clearly stated that checkout capabilities based on UCP will support multiple payment service providers, including PayPal and Google Pay.
In other words, UCP aims to be a "neutral highway," while PayPal hopes to become an indispensable toll station and payment node on this highway.
OpenAI and Stripe are the main competitors in this field.
As early as September, Stripe and OpenAI announced the launch of Instant Checkout in ChatGPT, supported by the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP).
ACP allows AI agents to proactively initiate purchase requests through structured APIs, with Stripe issuing shared payment tokens for payment confirmation under agent authorization. This enables AI to complete an entire transaction process from order placement to payment on behalf of users once authorization is obtained.
Stripe subsequently launched the Agentic Commerce Suite in December 2025, allowing merchants to:
Publish product catalogs for direct access by AI agents
Self-select which AI agents to sell through
Process payments, risk management, and dispute resolution through Stripe
Feed order events back to existing business systems
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—this mirrors its path to becoming the default payment API for internet companies.
In this context, PayPal and Stripe are clearly in direct confrontation:
Both are competing not just for payments themselves but also for the critical control points when AI agents truly "execute transactions."
Comparing the three systems together
(Here typically one would enter a horizontal comparison of UCP / ACP / PayPal + Cymbio:
Who controls the routing layer, who controls the protocol, who controls payments and fulfillment execution—and the respective sources of their network effects.)
If you agree, I can help you directly organize the next segment into a comparative table or a highly summarized "pattern assessment," clearly stating the role and competition among the three parties.
Key Takeaways
There are three particularly prominent impacts:
Business behavior will become conversational and can be executed by agents
Purchasing is no longer a step-by-step process completed by users but is instead managed by AI, which understands needs through conversation and completes transactions under authorization.
Merchants “integrate once, distribute everywhere”
Merchants no longer need to adapt for each platform separately; they only need to complete one integration for products to reach users via multiple AI agents and channels.
Payments will become embedded infrastructure, rather than the transaction endpoint
Payments are no longer "the final step button," but deeply embedded within the capabilities of discovery, decision-making, and fulfillment processes.
Proactive Response from Payment Networks
By the way, Mastercard announced in January 2026 that it is researching "AI business rules," essentially attempting to get ahead and help define the governance framework during this transformation.
Payment networks clearly recognize that the authority to establish rules and standards will determine future positioning before AI agents complete transactions at scale.
As noted in our analysis this January: banks, fintech companies, and the crypto industry must ensure they are "at the table," rather than being incorporated afterward.
If financial institutions cannot embed themselves into these platforms in advance, their financial functions may ultimately be internalized by Big Tech.
Positions and Choices of Different Factions
For Banks
Traditional banks lack the technical infrastructure to compete directly 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 ensure that banks will not disappear but must reposition themselves.
For Fintechs
Companies like PayPal, Stripe, and Adyen have long realized that simply focusing on payments is insufficient to solidify a long-term position.
As a result, they are proactively moving upstream into: commerce orchestration, merchant services, and the infrastructure layer of the AI era.
For Crypto
The currently announced Agentic Commerce protocol systems are almost entirely following traditional financial pathways: credit cards, Google Pay, PayPal, Stripe, etc., occupy core positions.
In UCP, ACP, and Store Sync, cryptocurrencies and stablecoins are largely absent, aside from a few sporadic experiments involving Stripe or Coinbase.
This raises the question: is it a significant strategic oversight or a deliberate exclusion? Only time will tell.
For crypto companies, the window of opportunity is very clear: if they can build native payment rails suitable for AI agents (instant settlement, programmable currency, global reach) and successfully embed themselves in AI platforms before protocols are fully established, they may be able to leapfrog traditional finance; conversely, they risk being permanently excluded from the system.
Conclusion
Fundamentally, PayPal is striving to catch up with Stripe and adapt to rapidly changing consumer behaviors.
As people increasingly complete everyday decision-making within AI platforms, these platforms will gradually evolve into brands' "default virtual storefronts."
Whoever can embed the underlying infrastructure behind these storefronts will remain at the table.
PayPal's stock price has been sluggish for some time, down about 37% from its 52-week high. Investors continually question whether the company still possesses structural relevance in the long term, while the rise of the Crypto + AI narrative has only intensified these concerns.
In this context, the diversified layout surrounding Agentic Commerce is not an offensive choice but a "necessary cost" to maintain relevance. For PayPal, this is not a value-added effort but a necessary entry fee: only by completing this transition can it hope to maintain a core position in the next generation of business infrastructure.
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