Stripe's agentic strategy genesis

Consumer behavior is already shifting, people are asking LLMs what to buy, building shopping lists in chat, and moving through commerce in new ways. In this episode of Retailgenic, Scot sits down with Maia to unpack what “agentic commerce” actually means, why Stripe is moving fast, and what merchants can do now to get ready for checkout inside AI experiences. 

They discuss:

• Why agentic commerce is a spectrum: fully autonomous agents vs. AI-assisted buying inside chat interfaces
• Stripe’s four AI focus areas (and why agentic commerce is only one bucket)
• The big initiatives driving Stripe’s agentic push
• What Copilot Checkout looks like in practice: Stripe-powered checkout embedded natively in chat
• How Stripe is approaching merchant control and merchant-of-record requirements
• How product discoverability works today (feeds + syndicator integrations) vs. the longer-term self-serve vision
• What merchants are asking for most: fraud, trust, identity, and governance in an agent-led world
• The “why now” moment: traffic shifts, zero-click pressure, and board-level attention accelerating experiments

Agentic commerce is no longer theoretical, it’s becoming a real channel. The winners will be the merchants who make their catalogs discoverable, keep control of checkout, and build trust and fraud defenses for an AI-led future.

Notable Timestamps
02:06 – Scot introduces Maia, AI CRO at Stripe
04:07 – Maia’s background: e-commerce founder → LivingSocial → Stripe
06:54 – Stripe’s 4 AI buckets (infrastructure, AI across payments, dev tools, agentic commerce)
09:22 – The “agentic commerce is a mirage” debate + definition confusion
10:43 – Maia’s spectrum definition: autonomous vs. chat-native buying
14:40 – Copilot Checkout: what it is, how Stripe fits, and where to sign up (waitlist)
18:15 – Agentic Commerce Suite: discoverability, checkout/fraud, choosing agents in dashboard
20:04 – How products become discoverable: direct feed vs. syndicators + onboarding reality today
21:15 – Shared Payment Tokens (SPTs): secure handoff + merchant-of-record control
24:05 – Merchant sentiment shift: from skepticism → exec sponsors + resources dedicated
29:37 – Fraud + trust layer: Radar expansion, Link wallet, and SPT fraud signals
31:58 – 2030 sizing: Stripe won’t pick a %, but “this is happening”
33:07 – Where to follow Maia/Stripe + NRF context

👉 Connect with Maia: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maiaj/
👉 Connect with Scot: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/
👉 Learn more about Stripe: https://stripe.com/payments/ai

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