As AI Assistants Fight Over Shoppers, Infrastructure Gets Paid Either Way.

In 1956, a trucking executive named Malcolm McLean loaded metal boxes onto a tanker in Newark and transported them to Houston. The longshoremen detested the change, but the math was difficult to dispute. Loading a ship by hand cost about $5.86 per ton, while loading the same amount with McLean's boxes cost just 16 cents. The pivotal part of the story occurred a decade later.

McLean held the patents for the corner fittings that allowed the boxes to stack and lock onto trucks, trains, and ships. Instead of licensing them and collecting a toll on every container that moved, McLean made them available royalty-free so the entire industry could build to one standard. By relinquishing control of the box, McLean gained access to the world's ports.

This business model, which involves providing infrastructure to others without owning the end-user experience, is the focus of the author's attention as agentic commerce gains momentum.

The expensive assumption driving most of the commerce land-grabs is that winning a sale means owning the starting point of the shopper's journey. Constructing an AI assistant, attracting users, and convincing merchants to connect to yet another purchasing method is a significant gamble, and most companies making this bet will fail.

However, there is another approach that receives less attention, despite being based on a model that the payments industry has employed for nearly six decades. Construct the essential component that helps AI assistants and merchants close the sale. Make it easy to integrate. Earn revenue when they utilize it. Consumers may switch their shopping destinations up to a dozen times without changing the infrastructure that completes the purchase.

The most recent example of this model is Amazon's announcement that U.S. merchants using its Multichannel Fulfillment service can offer the Prime badge and fast, free Prime delivery on their own websites without incurring additional costs beyond standard fulfillment fees. Merchants retain their payment processor, order management, returns, and customer service, while Prime membership is verified post-checkout. The shopper never needs to sign into Amazon.

This approach, which involves providing infrastructure to others while sparing them from having to implement it, is reminiscent of the business model that the card networks have followed for decades. The card networks do not issue cards, lend money, hold deposits, or own consumers or merchants. Instead, they establish and enforce the rules that others build upon, guaranteeing the outcome.

Merchants know they will be paid, consumers know their goods will be delivered or that they are protected if the card is stolen, and banks are assured of what they are owed and when. The networks manage the switches that connect numerous banks to thousands of merchants, handle chargebacks and zero-liability claims, and collect a small percentage on every transaction that traverses their infrastructure.

The rails are built once, at significant expense, while each subsequent transaction costs almost nothing to process. This results in substantial operating margins for the networks.