Stripe president predicts AI will replace traditional checkout pages in commerce

The way consumers shop online may soon be upended by artificial intelligence, according to Stripe’s top executives. Will Gaybrick, Stripe’s president of technology and business, predicted that AI agents could soon make the traditional online checkout page obsolete. Speaking on a recent episode of the "A16z Show," Gaybrick said frictionless purchasing tools already exist, but the next leap could allow shoppers to simply buy products directly from a display page, or even have AI agents make purchases with little intervention.

"It’s been very easy to get through a checkout page these days, but should you even need to go to one, or should you just be able to say buy it on a product display page? I think so," Gaybrick said. He acknowledged that there are still "open questions" about how so-called agentic commerce will ultimately develop, but added that even a "less ambitious form" could spell the end for checkout as it currently exists. Gaybrick further stated, "We think machines will want to buy from other machines. And there’s really a question of what should checkout look like for agents?"

Despite the concept’s promise, there has yet to be a breakout moment for agentic commerce, Gaybrick noted. Nonetheless, companies like Stripe and Shopify are already laying the groundwork with tools such as Stripe's "Link" and Shopify’s "Shop Pay," which streamline the existing checkout process and offer a preview of more advanced automated solutions.

Internally, Gaybrick said Stripe has reoriented its business strategy, moving from being solely a payments provider to becoming a broader "multi-product platform." The timeframe for widespread adoption of fully agentic AI shopping remains uncertain, as these technologies are still seen as more advanced than current popular offerings like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Agentic AI is intended to act with a degree of autonomy, making proactive decisions with minimal human input, though users can still control the boundaries of what the AI is permitted to do.

In the shopping context, this could eventually mean placing significant purchasing authority in the hands of AI agents, a step many consumers are not yet ready to take. A June survey conducted by Commerce, an e-commerce company based in Austin, and PayPal among online shoppers in the US, UK, and Australia found consumers remain hesitant to allow AI agents to make purchases without explicit approval. "Consumers want the time and money savings that agentic commerce can deliver, but they aren’t ready to trust agents as an autonomous buyer," Sharon Gee, senior vice president of AI for products at Commerce, said in a statement.

Stripe CEO Patrick Collison echoed the optimistic outlook for agentic commerce’s future. "All the commerce is going agentic," Collison said during a live interview in April, explaining that in the future, people will still shop but will do so through their AI agents. Collison described his own experience debating with ChatGPT about which bike case to buy, ultimately wishing for the simplicity of pressing a "buy" button at the end of the conversation rather than filling out web forms, which he called "not a value-add activity."

Collison, along with his brother John (Stripe’s president) and Gaybrick, outlined in a letter to investors that they believe an important threshold in AI has already been reached. According to the letter, obtained by Axios, the trio wrote that "singularity," the theoretical moment when AI surpasses human intelligence, was reached in January, emphasizing that this reflected a tangible leap in areas such as new firm creation, and signaling that they are taking the implications for the future of commerce seriously.

While consumer trust in autonomous AI agents remains a hurdle, Stripe and its leadership are betting that agentic commerce will eventually transform how online purchases are made, promising a wholesale shift in the shopping experience as technology continues to advance.