As the AI commerce protocol war heats up, payment processors are quietly choosing sides. This isn’t neutral infrastructure—it’s a bet on which business model will dominate the agentic economy.
For merchants on Stripe: Lower barrier to ACP adoption. Enabling agentic payments through OpenAI’s protocol requires as little as one line of code.
For merchants optimized for Google Pay: Lower barrier to UCP adoption. Transactions flow naturally through Google’s commerce and measurement infrastructure.
The Lock-In Effect
Payment processor alignment creates downstream lock-in effects. Once a merchant commits to one payment infrastructure, switching costs accumulate:
Integration complexity
Transaction history and analytics
Customer payment preferences
Compliance and security certifications
Why It Matters
The payment layer is where business model assumptions get encoded. Stripe’s alignment with OpenAI supports transaction-fee economics. PayPal’s alignment with Google supports advertising-embedded commerce.
Whichever protocol wins the commerce layer will determine the monetization model for the entire agentic economy.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
