UseAI glossary
Agentic commerce
When an AI agent makes purchases on its user's behalf: it compares, chooses and pays, within limits set in advance. Payment networks such as Visa and Mastercard have set up dedicated systems, with payment tokens of limited scope. The tricky question of liability remains in the case of an unwanted purchase or a hijacked agent.
In other words
Handing your bank card to an assistant along with a shopping list and a spending cap: handy, provided the rules were clearly set beforehand.
Alyriaz articles that mention it
- Meta wants to put an agent in your inbox, your calendar and your payments
Meta is preparing an agent capable of accessing users' messaging, calendar and purchase history. We analyse what this combination of scopes implies.
- Agents that pay: the legal framework is being built urgently
A payment protocol for agents, normative work on their identity, and a proposed law all converge on the same requirement: being able to prove who authorised an action. We analyse this undertaking.
- A trading platform opens up trading to AI agents, with no loss cap
A major exchange platform has opened live trading to AI agents via a dedicated interface, leaving guardrail configuration to the user and with no loss cap on the sub-account. We analyse what this entails.
- The week AI became an industry like any other
Weekly round-up for 10–16 August 2026: IPO, memory shortage, physical security, legal hires. We connect these events, which all tell the same story of a shift.
- Delegating decisions to a machine: where does reasonableness end?
As AI agents become capable of acting, the question of what we delegate to them becomes concrete. We propose three criteria to distinguish reasonable delegations from problematic ones.
- When your AI pulls out the credit card: agentic commerce is really arriving
Visa and Mastercard have rolled out systems that allow AI agents to make purchases autonomously. We explain how it works technically, what it changes for the consumer, and the trust and liability questions it raises.