Stripe says AI-agent purchases are growing, but withholds totals

What agents are buying

Stripe counted about 70 agents using its service at the time of its analysis. That number has since grown to roughly 200, including Meta’s Muse and Grok Bot.

Most agents spend about $100 per transaction, Stripe executive Hill said. Some users have asked agents to book flights or buy furniture costing thousands of dollars.

Retail made up 36% of transactions and 32% of their total value. Travel came next, accounting for 28% of volume.

A payment layer, not a market share report

Link does not give agents the user’s actual bank-card number. It issues a separate 16-digit number, and users can set a spending limit.

Anthropic and OpenAI also use Link, though not yet for agent purchases. Hill says Stripe will not be the only option: he named PayPal and Shopify’s Shop Pay as competitors, and said the market is still in its early stages.

The figures show activity, not scale. Stripe has disclosed neither total spending nor how much of Link’s business comes from agents. I think that gap matters more than the jump from 70 agents to 200: a growing roster says little about whether agent-led shopping is becoming a meaningful payment category.

What I’d want to know is how often users let agents complete purchases without stepping in, and how much those purchases add up to. Until Stripe publishes that, the clearest signal is that the infrastructure is being used — not that autonomous shopping has arrived.