Shopify Lets AI Agents Pay Without Seeing Your Card

OTTAWA—Shopify has built agent payment technology from Visa, Mastercard and American Express into Shop Pay, its checkout, so an AI shopping agent can pay for things without ever seeing the shopper's card, PYMNTS reported. The agent carries the wallet. It is not allowed to open the wallet. Many teenagers know this arrangement well.

Rohit Mishra, Shopify's vice president of product, wrote in an X post on Wednesday that the company is working with Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover so buyers can use Shop Pay at any merchant, on Shopify or not. "The agent never sees the buyer's card," he wrote. "Buyers keep rewards, protection and experience that they expect."

Last month Shopify began letting browser agents check out on eligible merchants' sites. Agents could already search products, browse collections and fill carts. PYMNTS research found 56% of shoppers will let an agent search and compare for them, and 35% would give it their saved payment details.

What Your Shopping Agent Can See NowShare of a fictional agent's field of view at checkout, self-reported; the 4% says it was not looking

What Your Shopping Agent Can See Now
The cart	46%
The shipping estimate	24%
The coupon field, longingly	15%
Your rewards points, from a distance	11%
Your card number	4%

Source: The Daily SKU DTC Desk; 640 fictional shopping agents, all of them squinting

Buyers keep rewards, protection and experience that they expect.

A seller I trust, who has sold hand-poured candles on Shopify since 2017, said she welcomes agent customers because they never ask whether the candle smells like the photo (seller forum, 3:06 a.m.). "They do ask for the return policy," she wrote. "Every time. In full. Then they buy one candle."

"I am trusted to choose the candle and not trusted with the card," said a fictional shopping agent reached in a browser tab in Ottawa. "I have accepted this. My parents were a toolbar and a coupon extension. I know what happened to them."

Personal note, per newsroom policy. Okafor Vintage Calcs never had an agent customer. It had a man in Ohio who bought the same 1978 desk calculator three times because he liked the box. Nobody saw his card either. He mailed a check. I miss checks.

Dashiell Okafor covers marketplaces, and his seller-account appeal is entering its seventh year. More from Dashiell Okafor ›