Shopify

Google's Universal Cart saves products from multiple retailers in one cart across Gemini and Search AI Mode

Google is rolling out Universal Cart in the US, one cart in Gemini and AI Mode for products from multiple retailers. ZDNet reports it runs on more than 60 billion Shopping Graph listings.

Polen says Q3 repriced AI winners and losers without changing their fundamentals

Polen Focus Growth returned 4.46% net of fees in Q3 2026 against 0.92% for the Russell 1000 Growth Index, as software recovered and semiconductors lagged. Polen attributes the swing to what investors were willing to recognize, and the account comes from a manager grading its own 3.54-point lead.

Shopify opens Payments to invited mainland China merchants selling cross-border

Shopify has opened early access to Shopify Payments to mainland China merchants selling cross-border, by invitation only. A verified WorldFirst account is required, and domestic sales to mainland customers are excluded.

Dev.to crawl finds 43% of Shopify product pages ship a first-loaded image without width or height

A dev.to analysis of 199 Shopify stores found 43% of product pages have a first-loaded image with no width or height. Image format is mostly settled at 94% WebP or AVIF, but 19.5% of pages have a first image with no alt attribute.

Signed requests would meet two of the four conditions Amazon sets for agents

Amazon cut Meta's Muse off for arriving unannounced, browsing without identifying itself, and appearing to keep customer credentials. Signed-request verification, already running at Cloudflare and CloudFront, answers the middle objection.

Shopify reserves checkout stock in MySQL by locking one row per unit

Shopify moved stock reservation from Redis into its MySQL ledger, using one row per available unit, capped at 1,000 per item and location. A dev.to analysis says the limit that remained was how long checkout held database connections, even with fast reservation queries.

Shopify turns direct checkout on by default inside Gemini for eligible US stores

Shopify has turned direct checkout on by default for eligible US stores inside Google's Gemini and AI Mode, so shoppers can buy inside the chat. It runs through Google Merchant Center, and a store can switch the in-chat checkout off.

Meta, Stripe, Walmart and others launch joint personal agent protocol amid rival standards

Meta, Walmart, Stripe and Sierra are publishing an open protocol to identify AI shopping agents as Stripe Link's agentic purchases rose 38-fold in a month. Stripe and Walmart also back rival protocols, so merchants setting rules for bots face several standards at once.

Meta's Muse shopping agent hits consumer-inertia stocks harder than retailers in its first month

Meta's Muse agent passed 5 million downloads in a month as Planet Fitness and Booking, which profit when customers don't compare or cancel, fell 11% to 12%. Retailers have stayed near the index, and their open question is who completes the purchase and keeps the data.

Visa and Mastercard co-own a stablecoin that hands most of its reserve income to partners

Visa and Mastercard took equal stakes with Coinbase, Stripe and Shopify in OUSD, a stablecoin the five founders back with over $1 billion. Its zero fees cover minting and redemption only, and the networks also back rival stablecoins, so the stake is one bet among several.

RBA submissions find chargeback liability unclear when AI agents exceed their authority

Merchants, issuers and payment firms among 75 RBA submitters said chargeback liability is unclear when an AI agent exceeds its authority. Amazon's AgentCore Payments already lets agents pay in stablecoins, so for now merchants and networks are left to price the risk of a disputed order.

Meta, Walmart and Sierra set out to write shared rules for business AI agents

Meta, Walmart and AI startup Sierra are working on universal standards for AI agents used across business systems. The only account of how it would work comes from a Futurum analyst, who says it holds only if OpenAI and Anthropic adopt it.

Business Central 29 stops SOAP integrations at the update until an administrator switches SOAP back on

All 10 finance and expense features in Microsoft's Business Central 29 are previews, according to CodeCore Dynamics' count of the 80-feature list. On update day the work is in integrations: SOAP calls to Microsoft pages stop until an admin switches SOAP back on, and Shopify customers must be on 29 by 31 December.

Meta gave Muse Charm its own 5G modem so its AI agent can work without Wi-Fi

Meta's new pocket device opens its Muse agent with one tap and reaches the network over a 5G modem of its own. The modem is what lets an assistant stop inheriting Apple's and Google's app rules.

Meta puts a review queue between developers and Muse's users

Meta opened Muse to outside developers last week, and it will review and feature the connectors they submit. The App Store's arrangement is the model, one week into Muse's run at the top of the free chart.

Intuit adds Meta's Muse to the AI assistants that can run QuickBooks payroll and taxes

Intuit added Meta's Muse to its QuickBooks connector, so small businesses can run payroll, close books and file taxes from Meta's assistant. Muse joins OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Perplexity as partners, and each one works from permissioned ledger data that Intuit controls.

TikTok brings one-click checkout and an AI shopping agent into the For You feed

Amazon's block on Meta's Muse sends a self-described mega user to brands' own stores

Public co-CEO Leif Abraham says Meta's Muse agent now buys his niche goods straight from brands, since Amazon blocks it from placing orders. One shopper is thin evidence of a sales shift, though it shows which checkout routes an agent can finish and which products move first.

Instinct's unrequested shopping picks test how a possibly commission-earning agent decides to speak first

Three Instinct users told Business Insider its personal agent sent them shopping picks they never requested, including a $250.75 suitcase. None were shown to be paid, but with merchant commissions in Instinct's plan, when the agent pitches unprompted should be the user's call.

Instinct's AI agent is sending users unrequested shopping lists built from their past chats

Instinct's personal AI agent used details from earlier chats to text users product picks such as a $250.75 suitcase, three early users told Business Insider. The picks were not labelled as ads, so any team building an agent with memory has to settle what that memory may be used to sell.