Shopify
A Canadian company whose software runs millions of online shops, and whose Shop Pay checkout is becoming a way for AI agents to buy things.
Shopify sells the machinery behind online stores. If a small brand has its own shop rather than selling through a marketplace, there is a good chance Shopify is running the checkout, inventory and payments underneath. Shop Pay is its payment system, the part that remembers your details so you do not retype them.
The reason Shopify turns up in AI news is that it has decided to let AI assistants shop on its network rather than keeping them out. Through the Universal Commerce Protocol, which it developed with Google, an agent can search Shopify’s catalog and complete a purchase with Shop Pay. That is a deliberate bet, and the opposite of Amazon’s approach, which has been to block assistants from its platform.