PAYMENT MODELS: Riding the e-commerce buy now, pay later hype train while it lasts
National retail turnover from e-commerce is expected to hit 10% by the end of 2026, with more than half of it coming from buy now, pay later. Online shopping is becoming the domain of those who don’t quite have it now.
The share price bloodbath after Google's quarterly results did not stop its chief business officer, Philipp Schindler, from attempting to explain the company's shift towards capturing valuable shopping intent from AI-powered search. As the percentage of AI web traffic grew from 22% in 2025 to 52% by June 2026, it became increasingly clear that traditional, human-driven web activities were no longer the primary source of revenue.
In response, Google's search product evolved into a unified platform, blending traditional search results with AI-powered search, allowing the company to leverage the upper-funnel queries for potential new commercial opportunities.
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