Weekly briefing Week 39: whoever gives the agent its till also distributes the risk
Five stories of the week from 21 to 25 September 2026, one thesis and one number. Amazon locks out an AI agent, Shopify gives it its own payment rail, and two surveys show where the risk lands when nobody steers the payment method deliberately.
The five stories of the week
1. Amazon locks out Meta’s AI agent Muse. Since the evening of 20 September, Muse has been told when shopping on amazon.com that continued access by an unauthorised AI agent violates the terms of use; GeekWire reported it first on 21 September. Amazon justifies the block by saying Meta did not announce the access, the agent does not identify itself and it apparently stores customers’ login credentials — Meta disputes the last point. The decision was made neither by a legislator nor by a card scheme, but by a merchant in its own terms and conditions. Read the analysis
2. One day later, Shopify opens its checkout to the same agent. On 21 September Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke and Meta’s Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang announced that Muse will be connected to Shop Pay’s agentic checkout, according to Lütke for all Shopify shops. Neither names a timetable, countries or terms; according to Shopify’s Help Center, the existing Meta channel requires sales to the USA, Canada or Mexico. Within 24 hours, both answers that agentic commerce knows are on the table: door closed, or door open — but through the platform’s own till. Read the analysis
3. Customers want the agent — and purchase on invoice as the way back. In an Appinio survey commissioned by Riverty and Adyen among 1,000 people in Germany, 49 per cent expect AI assistants to take over a large share of their everyday shopping within five years. 93 per cent want to be able to view or stop AI purchases at any time, and 51 per cent prefer paying by invoice when an agent buys. Only 39 per cent would still entrust an AI with 51 euros or more a month, down from 50 per cent in December 2025 — and Riverty itself sells purchase on invoice. Read the analysis
4. 93 per cent of the online shops surveyed have already faced fraud. On 22 September bevh and CRIF published a survey of 76 German online shops: 48 per cent see the risk as having increased, and the most frequently cited patterns are identity fraud (75 per cent), denied receipt of goods (60) and ordering with no intention to pay (57). The sample is small and CRIF sells fraud prevention, but the direction is clear. Most of these patterns hit payment methods with no liability shift, where the merchant bears the loss alone. Read the analysis
5. Adyen becomes Flatpay’s backbone. On 23 September Adyen and Flatpay announced a strategic partnership: Adyen supplies the payment platform and local acquiring for Flatpay in seven markets, including Germany, while Flatpay keeps its more than 100,000 small merchants, by its own account, and the personal contact. Flatpay can also add instant payouts, merchant financing, business accounts and card issuing from Adyen’s toolkit. The announcement names no timetable or terms, and does not say whether the contracting party or payout dates change for existing customers. Read the analysis
The thesis of the week
This week was hardly about new payment methods and almost entirely about rails — and about who writes the rules on them. Amazon and Shopify treated the same agent in opposite ways on the same day and pursued the same goal: keeping the payment process where the platform controls it. In London, Revolut demonstrated the same pattern at the counter, paying by face at zero per cent transaction fee — except that till, account and customer all have to sit with the same provider. And Adyen behind Flatpay is the most honest form of it: at the front the sales rep with the flat rate, at the back the machine that settles, pays out and may in future also pre-finance. Whoever provides the rail decides on payouts, liability and switching costs. The merchant usually only decides on the surface.
The two surveys of the week show what it costs to let it run. Customers want the agent, but they want to keep the way back in their own hands, and for half of them the way back is called invoice. That is exactly where the fraud measured by bevh and CRIF lands: denied receipt of goods and ordering with no intention to pay are not card problems, they are bad debts without a liability shift. According to the EHI study Online-Payment 2026, 26.1 per cent of online revenue runs through purchase on invoice and 4.7 per cent through instalment purchases — almost a third of checkout on routes where the merchant bears the risk alone. Anyone who now allows agent orders on invoice without steering this doubles the gap.
What sat alongside it in the same week fits the picture. The ibi Payment Report shows banks planning Wero as a strategy while only 13 per cent of consumers have an account and only one in ten uses their own bank’s wallet — the customer’s habit beats the institution’s strategy. And the story on the launch of Pontes is a lesson in how quickly infrastructure for banks gets sold as news for the till. The sum of the week: it is not the new method that decides margin and risk, but the rail it runs on. By the end of the year every merchant should be able to write down on one page whose rail their payments run on, who pays in the event of a loss and how they get out again — at the latest before the new consumer credit law reorders purchase on invoice and instalment purchases anyway on 20 November.
The number of the week
93 per cent — twice in one week. According to the survey by bevh and CRIF (fieldwork 1 June to 14 August 2026, published on 22 September), 93 per cent of the 76 German online shops surveyed had already faced fraud or attempted fraud. And 93 per cent of the 1,000 respondents in the Appinio survey for Riverty and Adyen (fieldwork 14 to 17 August 2026, published on 24 September) want to be able to view or stop an AI’s purchases at any time. Both are provider-linked surveys. Read side by side, they describe the same gap from two sides: merchants and customers want control over the payment process, and both only have it where someone has chosen the payment method deliberately.
Looking ahead to next week
From 28 September to 1 October Sibos takes place in Miami Beach under the motto “Digital finance for AI-driven economies” — little relevance for merchants, but a likely venue for the next agentic payment announcements. On 30 September the ECB Governing Council holds its non-monetary policy meeting, where decisions on the digital euro are typically taken. On 4 October the Oktoberfest ends; a follow-up analysis by Visa is likely, following last year’s pattern, but would again be provider data only.
The threads of the week remain open: whether Amazon lifts its block on Muse and whether Shopify names a timetable and countries for Europe; how Flatpay handles the switch to Adyen for existing customers, at the latest by Adyen’s quarterly update on 28 October; and the new consumer credit law from 20 November, which for the first time covers buy now, pay later and instalment payments. On the cash register obligation and mandatory card acceptance there is still no cabinet decision. After that come the ECB information session for merchants on the digital euro pilot on 6 October at 15:00 CET, Next Generation Payment on 7 and 8 October in Cologne and, on 9 October, one year of the obligation to send instant transfers including Verification of Payee.