Stripe says AI agent purchases on Link are growing fast but gives no totals

According to a report from Upstarts Media, AI agents are increasingly using Stripe's Link service to shop for their users. Transactions rose 38-fold and payment volume rose 20-fold in September, but the growth started from a small base, and Stripe has not published purchase counts or total spending.

Stripe executive Dan Hill says the volume is becoming significant. About 70 agents were using the service when Stripe ran its analysis, and Hill says that number has grown to around 200, including Meta's Muse and Grok Bot. Most agents spend about $100 per transaction, though some users have them book flights or buy furniture worth thousands of dollars. Retail accounted for 36 percent of transactions and 32 percent of volume, while travel made up 28 percent of volume.

Link does not hand agents a user's real card number. It issues a separate 16-digit number, and users can set spending limits. Anthropic and OpenAI also use Link, though not yet for agent purchases. Hill acknowledges that Stripe will not remain the only option, naming PayPal and Shopify's Shop Pay as competitors and describing the market as very early.

Developers building purchasing agents can use Link's separate card numbers and spending limits rather than exposing a user's actual card details. Because Stripe has not published totals, teams should not treat the growth multiples as a measure of market size when planning. Agents tied to a single payment provider may face competition from PayPal and Shop Pay, so keeping the payment layer swappable is worth considering.