Will agentic commerce be wallet-first – not card-first? AI agents are about to change not only how we shop, but potentially who controls the payment relationship. In my latest article I studied why digital wallets could be at the centre of this shift. At Ant International's Voyage event in Shanghai, the company introduced the Agentic Mobile Protocol (AMP) – an open protocol designed to enable AI agents to transact across wallets, super apps and other digital interfaces. Together with Know-Your-Agent (KYA) and its interoperability with MasterCard and Visa, this raises an interesting question: Could the next generation of payments be built around wallets and AI agents rather than cards? The numbers make this worth watching. There were already 4.4 billion digital wallet users globally in 2025, while the Alipay+ ecosystem alone connects 50+ wallets, 150 million merchants and 2 billion user accounts. What I find really interesting is the open architecture behind the AMP. If agentic commerce is to scale globally, interoperability will be critical. Closed platforms may struggle to connect billions of agents, users, merchants and payment providers. Perhaps the real battle is therefore not card vs wallet. It is closed platforms vs open ecosystems. And that battle has only just started. Read my latest article on LinkedIn: https://t.co/YoXnLq0F0w #AgenticCommerce #AI #AIagents #DigitalWallets #digitalpayments #FinTech #OpenEcosystems #interoperability #DigitalEconomy #OpenProtocol