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Stripe Link

Link is a digital wallet built by Stripe. For returning Link customers, shipping address and payment credentials are already saved at Stripe, so checkout completes in fewer steps than a guest-checkout flow.

As of the 2026-04-29 launch of Link's wallet for agents, Link has a second major capability axis beyond the returning-customer-checkout fast path — agent-facing programmatic access through OAuth + per-transaction-approval spend requests. The 2026-04-29 post also discloses Link's consumer reach: more than 200 million consumers.

Mobile presence: iOS + Android as of the 2026-04-29 launch; the apps are the primary surface for approving agent spend requests away from the web checkout flow.

Agentic-commerce positioning

Per the 2026-03-12 Stripe retrospective, Link is repositioned as the answer to the agent-identity-resolution gap: because most agentic commerce today "still behaves like a guest checkout" with the buyer's identity materialising only at the buy moment, sellers lose their usual loyalty/personalisation/attribution signals. Link's saved credentials let an agent complete a purchase for a returning Link user "without exposing a shopper's personal or payment details" to the agent — the sensitive data stays within Stripe's vault while a scoped credential is made available to the agent.

This composes with SPTs: Link-vaulted credentials are the source of the payment method that an SPT then scopes to the agent's intent.

Wallet for agents (2026-04-29 extension)

Link became the substrate for a new product — Link's wallet for agents — launched 2026-04-29. See systems/stripe-link-wallet-for-agents for the full product page. The extension adds a second capability axis to Link:

  1. OAuth-based agent access. Consumers grant AI agents access to their Link wallet via a standard OAuth flow (see patterns/oauth-granted-access-to-user-wallet).
  2. Spend-request API. Agents call the wallet to request a scoped payment credential per transaction. The link-cli spend-request create ... shape of this API is documented in the launch post.
  3. Per-transaction human approval. Every agent spend request surfaces to the consumer for review + approval before any credential is released — default-on at launch. See concepts/per-transaction-human-approval-for-agent-spend.
  4. Two credential shapes, abstracted. Link mints either a one-time- use virtual card or an SPT behind a single wallet API, depending on the merchant. Stablecoins + other payment methods are "coming soon" per the launch post.
  5. Consumer-side observability and management. Consumers can track agent spending and revoke agent access from the Link UI (web, iOS, Android).

The Link + wallet-for-agents composition turns Link from "returning-customer checkout fast path" into "agent- accessible credential issuance layer for 200M+ consumers". The 2026-04-29 launch framing: "Link's wallet for agents removes the need to build wallet infrastructure from scratch … it also takes care of fund flow complexity and helps you reach Link's customer base of more than 200 million consumers."

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