Agentic commerce is splitting into two worlds. One world is open. Agents can acc
By Toddpie · March 23, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Agentic commerce is splitting into two worlds.
One world is open. Agents can access merchant catalogs, compare prices, and complete purchases through open protocols. Shopify grew AI-driven orders 15x last year by making their merchants' data readable by anyone's agent. Visa and Santander just ran the first end-to-end agentic payment pilot across five countries. J.P. Morgan committed payments infrastructure this month. The open side is getting built fast.
The other world is Amazon.
Amazon updated its Business Solutions Agreement with a new Agent Policy. Every AI tool must identify itself, can't mimic human browsing, and can be blocked at Amazon's discretion. Amazon is suing Perplexity for operating its agent on Amazon's marketplace. Consumer consent doesn't matter here. Your bank can authorize your agent to spend $500 on household goods. Amazon can still block that agent at the door.
This is a power only Amazon has at scale. Google doesn't own the checkout - it sends you to the merchant. Walmart can't block agents without losing volume. Shopify's merchants want the traffic. Amazon can block agents because enough consumers will come anyway.
I'd call this the Trust Fork. Not consumer-auth vs platform-auth. Closed vs open. And the only company with enough gravity to keep the door shut is Amazon.
For brands, this changes what "agentic readiness" means. On Amazon, your agent strategy is Rufus. There's no other option. Off Amazon, your job is making product data accessible to any agent - structured attributes, clean pricing, accurate inventory. Two different problems. The brands that treat them as one will get both wrong.
The open side is moving fast. The plumbing is real - J.P. Morgan and Visa don't make infrastructure bets for press releases. But Amazon still controls 40% of US e-commerce. That's a lot of gravity.
Full post: https://lnkd.in/gwNYpb_7