Sometimes, two apparently unrelated items of news form a bigger and more interesting picture.
In this case I saw two stories from completely different sources.
Rogue AI Agents in Banks
The first was THIS ONE in RT a week or so ago, based on an original from Axios (which is locked behind a paywall).
The story covers US banks raising the alarm about rogue AI agents operating within their systems carrying out automated tasks on behalf of customers. The agents do mundane automated tasks like paying bills, making purchases and routine inter-account transfers.
But banks have strict policies about customers logging in themselves and not giving others access to their login details. The AI agents break these rules. The bigger issue is that the AI agents themselves have been found acting well outside both bank policies and customer instructions on things like transaction value limits, the kinds of transactions permitted, and contacting external call centres.
Of course, banks being banks, the thing they have most complained about is AI agents being used to rapidly move funds between banks to take advantage of differences in savings interest rates, credit card rates, cashback deals etc. The AI's can do this far faster and more efficiently than humans. In the process it costs the banks some of their profit, but there is a concern that it could cascade into major market swings and even bank failures.
Google Universal Checkout
Meanwhile, Google have announced the launch of their UNIVERSAL CART. So far, it's only in the US, but is coming to other markets very soon.
The Universal Cart is powered by the [Universal Commerce Protocol](and is intended to really kickstart agentic e-commerce.) and is intended to really kickstart agentic e-commerce. It is sold as a valuable benefit for consumers, enabling them to shop more easily with all kinds of AI tools to help them find the best prices, offers and discount coupons.
In reality, there is a more insidious motive. Google have been given a kicking in several jurisdictions, particularly the EU, for their dominance in search and online advertising. With that avenue potentially losing revenue, they have worked to replace search with AI results, filling much of the first page of any search with wordy AI slop results. This has already impacted companies' e-commerce sites; my own one has lost all the SEO results I've spent nearly two decades building. I'm still at the top of the natural search results, but that puts us somewhere on page 2 after all the slop. Google's response... "buy more ads".
Having Universal Cart means that Google will likely succeed to a great extent in their objective of totally eliminating individual company e-commerce sites and keeping visitors on Google's own pages.
At first glance, this may look good for consumers. But actually, it's awful. Small businesses won't be able to afford the advertising, so consumers will be left with a single supplier for any particular purchase, and it'll be a large company that's just a box-mover with no customer service or expertise. Why learn your products when Google's AI will overwrite whatever you want to say ? Small businesses will close down and send their staff to join the AI-job-apocalypse dole queues.
Convergence and Conflict
Where this will get interesting is that Google Universal Cart will almost certainly insist on all payments being made through Google Pay (even if funded by a debit card or direct debit).
That means Google Pay AI agents processing payments by jumping into bank accounts, processing debit or credit cards etc to take payments and handle transaction data, taking advantage of cashback offers and all kinds of other shenanigans. Effectively, consumers will be handing control to Google, who in turn will then move the money around.
The banks in turn will try to block this. After all, it affects their bottom line. If Google Pay is processing transactions, Mastercard, Amex and Visa will be cut out of the equation and lose the massive fees they charge retailers. Google's AI agents will be managing customer accounts, but if the banks fall back on their T&C's about not handing login data over, customers will be seriously unhappy when the payment for their new X-Box or whatever gets blocked.
Will Google then set up their own in-house bank, and if so, will it be nominally hosted in some country whose GDP is lower than Google's and thus regulates it with a thoroughly light touch ? Or perhaps they'll just get the US government to lean on other countries financial regulators.
It will be interesting to see who wins this titanic struggle. Personally, I am definitely in a place of "a plague on all their houses".