Upstarts Media reported on 19 October 2026 that Stripe studied how AI agents spend money through Link, its checkout and payments tool. Stripe gave the data to Upstarts first. Dan Hill, who leads consumer product for Link, said Link now powers about 200 agents. The data covers September, when about 70 agents were signed on. Upstarts named Instinct, Muse and Grok Bot as agents that buy for their users through Link. It said Anthropic and OpenAI use Link, but not yet for agent shopping.
The free part of the article does not give the September numbers. It says the full report covers growth in payment volume, popular spending categories and typical transaction size, all behind a paywall. It does not say how much of Link's payment volume comes from agents. Upstarts said agents are a small piece of Link's overall reach, which spans 300 million users through businesses such as Airbnb and Uber. Hill said the volume Stripe sees now is becoming "very material."
For anyone who runs online checkout, Stripe's own count shows software agents buying for people on a major payment tool. The number of agents on Link has more than doubled since September. The figures needed to size their spending are not public yet.