Stripe Link Gives Agents Spending Power

Stripe is trying to own the authorization layer for agent payments, not just checkout. If it works, the moat is trust, controls, and distribution, not another shiny AI demo.

• –The `link-cli spend-request` flow gives agents a concrete primitive: specify merchant, amount, and context, then wait for human approval
• –One-time-use cards and Shared Payment Tokens reduce credential exposure, which is the key blocker for autonomous purchasing
• –Stripe can ship this faster than most startups because it already sits in the payments path for hundreds of thousands of merchants
• –The hard problems are governance and abuse: spending limits, revocation, fraud handling, and user comprehension will decide whether this becomes useful or annoying
• –This is more durable than “AI checkout” hype because it plugs agents into existing rails instead of asking merchants to adopt a new protocol