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Link's wallet for AI agents: what retailers need to know

AI agents such as Muse, Instinct and Claude Duet pay with Link's wallet for agents. What reaches your checkout, the limits that matter, and what to check.

By the ConversionVector teamUpdated 11 min read

Contents

Direct answer: Link's wallet for agents is Stripe's way for a personal AI agent to pay without seeing the shopper's card. The agent asks Link to approve a purchase, the shopper approves it with a passkey or biometrics, and Link gives the agent a payment credential. At most stores that credential is a one-time virtual card typed into your normal checkout, so you need no integration and no Stripe account to take these orders. What decides whether they succeed is your side of the flow: whether your bot checks let the agent reach and submit payment, whether your order flow can charge a single-use card once, and whether the total stays inside what the shopper approved.

This guide is for ecommerce directors, heads of payments and engineering leads. It covers how the wallet works, what reaches your checkout, the limits that matter, the extra route on Stripe checkouts, how agents are recognised, and what to check first.

Last verified: 1 November 2026 against Stripe's newsroom, blog and agentic commerce documentation, Link's developer documentation, CLI reference and help centre, Shopify's Fall '26 Edition and Anthropic's Help Center. Link's agent features change often and parts of them are in beta, so check the current versions before you plan work.

The agent shops the site as a shopper would, then asks Link to pay. It does this with a spend request: a record of what it wants to buy, from which merchant and for up to what amount. Link's docs say the request must include at least 100 characters explaining what the agent is buying and why, and that a request for a card must name the merchant and its website. It can also list line items and totals.

Link sends the request to the shopper, who has 30 minutes to approve it. Link's help centre says approval needs biometric authentication (passkey, Face ID or Touch ID), and a password won't do. Once the request is approved, Link places an initial authorisation for the approved amount on the shopper's own payment method and hands the agent a credential. The agent then completes your checkout. Link's help centre says the shopper's payment details "are never shared with the agent or merchants".

Who uses it: Stripe said on 21 October 2026 that Link "powers payments for more than 200 personal agents", naming Muse from Meta and Instinct among them. The same announcement covered Anthropic's Claude Duet. On 29 September Stripe said agentic purchases made with Link had increased 38 times over the previous month. That is Stripe's figure, and it gives no base, so read it as a direction rather than a size.

Where it works: agent payments are available to Link accounts created in the US and Canada. Stripe's documentation adds that "the sellers your customers buy from can be outside these countries". A UK or European store that ships to North America can already receive these orders.

What reaches your checkout

Link can return three kinds of credential. Which one the agent uses depends on what your checkout supports.

CredentialWhere it worksWhat you need to do
Virtual cardAny standard web checkout form. Link's docs say it "isn't limited to Link-enabled sellers or sellers that use Stripe"Nothing to integrate. Make sure your checkout and fraud rules let the agent pay with it
Link Pay TokenStripe payment forms that support Link (Checkout, Elements, hosted invoice pages)Take payments through a Stripe payment form with Link available
Shared Payment TokenSellers that accept programmatic payments through the Machine Payment Protocol (HTTP 402)Only relevant if you accept programmatic payments

For most retailers that means the virtual card. A card is one-time unless the request sets recurring terms. Link's help centre fills in what happens after the order:

  • Statement descriptor. The shopper sees LINK*[MERCHANT NAME] or just your name, depending on the payment type. Your customer service team may be asked about an unfamiliar descriptor.
  • Capture window. If you authorise first and capture later, Link says "the merchant has up to seven days to submit the final capture". If you don't capture within that window, the authorisation expires and no charge is made.
  • Refunds. You can refund the single-use card as normal. Link then returns the funds to the shopper's own payment method.
  • Who the shopper contacts. For "item not received, wrong item shipped, damaged item", Link tells shoppers to contact the merchant first and come back to Link if the merchant hasn't responded after 48 hours. Charge problems go to Link, and agent mistakes go to the agent's platform.
  • Final amount. Link's help centre says the final charge may be lower than the approved amount, "due to taxes or shipping calculated at final checkout".

Link's documentation doesn't describe any marker that tells you a card payment came from an agent. Expect these orders to look like ordinary card orders in your payment reports.

The limits that matter to a retailer

Link's CLI reference and spend request docs set limits that shape which of your orders an agent can complete:

LimitValue in Link's docsWhy it matters to you
Maximum per request500 USDA basket above this can't be paid with one request
Daily spend5,000 USDCaps how much one shopper's agent can spend in a day
Spend per rolling 30 days20,000 USDAs above, over a month
Approval window30 minutesThe shopper has to approve while the agent waits at your checkout. A short checkout session timer can expire first
First authorisationWithin 48 hours of first retrieval for eligible cardsThe card must be authorised soon after the agent receives it
Reuse"A one-time card can't be used twice"A second, separate authorisation on the same card will fail

Link's help centre adds that a user's limit "may vary depending on your purchase behaviour and the agent you're using".

Three kinds of order flow follow from these limits. They are our reading of the documentation, and Link doesn't list them, so test them before you rely on them:

  1. Charging more than one time per order. If your order system places a fresh authorisation when an order ships, charges a split shipment separately, or adds a later charge for a back-ordered item, a one-time card is likely to decline the second attempt. One authorisation at order time, captured within seven days, fits the card.
  2. Totals that rise late in checkout. The agent asks for an amount before it pays. If shipping, duties or a surcharge appear only at the last step, the total can exceed what the shopper approved. Link's docs list a re_authorize action for "the charge exceeded the approved amount", which means a new request and a new approval from the shopper. Since 29 September agents can also request an increase on an approved request, but Link says an increase can fail, and it can't be requested once the card has been used. Showing delivery costs and tax on the product page or basket helps the agent ask for the right amount the first time.
  3. Subscriptions. A request with recurring terms produces a card your billing system can charge again, and you schedule the billing. Link's docs say cancelling the Link credential "doesn't cancel the subscription with the merchant", so the shopper still has to cancel with you. Not every agent offers this: Anthropic says Claude Duet can't make recurring payments with Link.

Bot checks: where agent payments fail

A virtual card works anywhere only if the agent can reach your payment step and submit it. Link's CAPTCHAs page splits this into two cases.

On Stripe payment flows, Stripe "actively detects agents" on Stripe-hosted pages such as Checkout and hosted invoice pages, and on payment forms built with Elements. Its risk systems use that information when deciding, for example, whether to show a CAPTCHA. Link tells agent builders to help Stripe recognise them by using the Link wallet, Link identity and Web Bot Auth, and an unmodified browser.

On every other site, Link is plain about it: "Each business and service sets its own policy for agent traffic. Some block agents or show them CAPTCHAs, and Link can't change those decisions." Link's help centre tells shoppers that if a purchase fails at a merchant, they can "try a different retailer". That is the commercial risk.

Stripe also collects evidence about where agents fail. Agents can report each purchase attempt as success, blocked or abandoned, tagged with a reason such as captcha, anti_bot_script, cdn_block, waf_block, rate_limited, login_required, 3ds_challenge or payment_declined. Link's docs call this optional, and say "it's how Stripe finds the checkout flows that break agents and need improving". The docs don't describe a way for a store to see the reports about its own domain.

Our own data shows where those tags are likely to come from. In the Agent Commerce Index Q4 2026 basket test, 96 of 116 stores let a real browser reach checkout, but only 8 let a page-fetching agent through. At 81 of the 88 stores that only the browser got through, the checkout page was refused or challenged when it was requested without a real browser. An agent that types a virtual card into your checkout has to load it much as a browser does, so the browser figure is the closer guide. But our sign-in page scan on 31 October found a captcha script on 30 of the 182 sign-in pages we reached, and most of them scored visitors in the background rather than showing a widget. A low score can trigger a challenge after the form is submitted, which is where an agent's attempt usually ends. Our guide to agent checkout friction covers where to move those challenges.

Link gives agent builders two ways to prove who they are, so your bot rules can tell them apart from abuse:

  • Web Bot Auth. Agents sign their HTTP requests as specified by the IETF Web Bot Auth working group and publish a key directory. Link says "Stripe and some bot-management providers use these signatures as one input when they identify agents". Our Know Your Agent guide covers how to verify them at your CDN.
  • Link identity (beta). Your service can challenge an agent with an HTTP 401 response, and the agent replies with a Link credential: an Agent Attestation Token showing Link vouches for the agent, or a credential showing the shopper's email is verified. You verify it with Stripe's Agent Identity SDK (@stripe/agent-identity). Link's docs note that the SDK doesn't itself enforce single use or expiry, so your code has to.

Neither is required for an agent to pay. They give your bot management a reason to let a known agent through where it would otherwise challenge.

If you take payments with Stripe

Stripe payment forms give agents two shortcuts that a generic card form doesn't:

  • WebMCP tools. Stripe's WebMCP documentation lists Checkout (full page and embedded form), Elements and hosted invoice pages as UIs that expose structured tools to browser agents. The tools read the amount due and payment methods, select a method, fill fields and, where Stripe controls the submit button, start payment. Stripe marks payment submission as consequential, so the agent must get the shopper's confirmation first. WebMCP is experimental and depends on the agent's browser supporting it. Our WebMCP guide explains the standard.
  • Link Pay Token. On a Stripe form that supports Link, the agent can read your Stripe account ID through a WebMCP tool (or a hidden payment block inside the Stripe frame), request a Link Pay Token bound to that account, and submit it instead of typing card details. Link says "the token also fills in billing and shipping details". If the tools aren't there, the agent uses a virtual card instead.

Stripe's agent documentation doesn't describe a merchant setting for either. Practically, if you use Stripe, keep Link available as a payment method on the forms agents reach, and test your checkout with an agent before you change payment forms.

If you sell on Shopify

On Shopify checkouts, agents may not need Link at all. Shopify's Fall '26 Edition (28 October 2026) announced Shop Pay checkout inside personal AI agents, "starting with Muse from Meta, Claude Duet, and Instinct". Shopify said some of these agents also offer Shop Pay for brands not on Shopify. An agent with Link can still use a virtual card at any Shopify checkout that accepts cards, so the bot-check points above apply either way.

What to do this week

  1. Buy something from your own store with an agent. Use a browser agent with a US or Canadian Link account if you have one, or any browser agent from a data-centre IP. Note every challenge between product page and payment confirmation. In our scoring specification, TRX-02 checks that the cart is reachable by agent identities, TRX-03 that there's no captcha on cart or checkout pages, and TRX-10 that an agent can put a product in the basket and reach checkout.
  2. Ask your payments provider two questions. Will our fraud rules decline a single-use virtual card from a US issuer by default? And will an order placed from a data-centre IP, by a shopper who passed biometric approval elsewhere, be challenged at payment?
  3. Map your charges per order. List every point where your system authorises or charges a card after checkout: dispatch, split shipments, pre-orders, back-orders and add-ons. Anything beyond one authorisation captured within seven days needs a fallback for single-use cards.
  4. Show the full price early. Put delivery costs, duties and tax on the product page or in the basket, so the agent asks the shopper to approve the right amount. TRX-01 (guest checkout is available) matters too: an agent paying with a one-time card has no saved account to sign in to.
  5. Set an agent rule on purpose. Decide whether verified, signed agent traffic should skip the challenges on your checkout, and set it in your bot management rather than leaving it to a default bot score.
  6. Brief customer service. Tell the team about the LINK* descriptor, refunds to single-use cards, and that shoppers may name an agent as the buyer.

Sources

Questions

Do I need to use Stripe to accept payments from Link's agent wallet?
No. Link's documentation says the virtual card an agent receives works with a standard web checkout form and isn't limited to Link-enabled sellers or sellers that use Stripe. Stores that take payments through Stripe Checkout, Elements or hosted invoice pages get an extra route: the agent can pay with a Link Pay Token instead of typing card details.
How do I know an order was placed by an AI agent paying with Link?
Link's documentation doesn't describe a flag that tells the store a payment came from an agent. To your payment system it looks like a card payment. Link's help centre says the shopper's statement shows LINK*[MERCHANT NAME], or just the merchant name, depending on the payment type. If the agent signs its requests with Web Bot Auth or presents a Link identity credential, your bot management or your own code can recognise it before payment.
Is there a spending limit on agent purchases with Link?
Yes. Link's CLI reference lists a maximum of 500 USD per spend request, 5,000 USD of daily spend and 20,000 USD per rolling 30 days. Link's help centre says a user's limit may vary with their purchase behaviour and the agent they use. A basket above the per-request cap can't be paid with one request.
Can an AI agent buy a subscription with Link?
Sometimes. A spend request can set recurring terms, in which case the card is not one-time and your billing system schedules the later charges. If the user cancels the Link credential, Link's docs say that doesn't cancel the subscription with the merchant. Some agents don't use this: Anthropic says Claude Duet can't make recurring payments with Link.
Which countries does Link's agent wallet work in?
Agent payments are available to Link accounts created in the US and Canada. Stripe's documentation says the sellers those customers buy from can be outside these countries, so a UK, European or Australian retailer that sells to US or Canadian shoppers can receive these orders through its normal checkout.

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