The software industry's anxiety over AI agents replacing traditional SaaS models is forcing established platforms to actively defend their turf. Today on The Merchant Desk, we're dissecting how Salesforce is navigating early adoption friction for its agentic tools, why Shopify's expanding B2B features are structurally squeezing wholesale incumbents, and what Visa's new trust infrastructure reveals about the gap between machine capabilities and consumer confidence.
A new analysis shows that grocery retailers are increasingly deploying AI tools for back-end operations like quality control, demand forecasting, and dynamic pricing. The consensus is that these applications offer a much higher and more immediate return on investment compared to flashy, consumer-facing AI gimmicks. However, success hinges on solving foundational challenges like clean data, breaking down organizational silos, and effective change management within a notoriously low-margin industry.
Why it matters
This highlights where the real, non-hype value of AI in commerce is being created today. For operators in merchant tech, it confirms that the most valuable AI solutions are those that attack stubborn, expensive operational problems. The focus on data quality as a prerequisite is critical—it's the unglamorous but essential foundation for any successful AI strategy in retail.
Visa is expanding the 'Intelligent Commerce' platform we saw it piloting in Europe, formally rolling out infrastructure tools like the 'Agent Score' to verify machine buyers. The launch comes alongside new data revealing a major adoption bottleneck: only 14% of consumers currently trust AI enough to allow autonomous purchases without manual verification.
Why it matters
Visa is playing the long game, positioning its network to be the default trust and settlement layer for the machine-to-machine economy. But the low 14% consumer trust figure reinforces a stark reality we've tracked: the foundational payment rails for agentic commerce are arriving much faster than user confidence.
South African fintech Float, which offers a card-linked installment platform, has officially launched in the United Kingdom. The company allows shoppers to use their existing Visa or Mastercard credit to split purchases into interest- and fee-free monthly installments. Float argues that its experience building in the constrained South African market gives it a competitive advantage, marking a notable instance of African fintech innovation being exported to a developed market.
Why it matters
This is a significant reversal of the usual technology transfer narrative. Float's expansion suggests that solutions built and hardened in the unique constraints of an emerging market can be robust and competitive enough for a market as sophisticated as the UK. For South African operators, it's a validation that local innovation can have global relevance and scalability.
Despite the 155% surge in digital wallet adoption and the SARB's rollout of interoperable QR standards we recently tracked, a new analysis warns that South Africa's payment ecosystem is facing an interoperability and trust deficit. The rapid proliferation of walled-garden wallets and real-time rails like PayShap has outpaced merchant education and consumer awareness, allowing traditional card payments to remain dominant.
Why it matters
We previously noted that SA digital wallet usage is soaring alongside lingering data security concerns. This analysis confirms that fragmentation is the true bottleneck to displacing cash at scale. For operators, the next battleground isn't just launching another closed payment method, but solving for cross-platform interoperability and unified user experiences.
Digital lender Branch International has conducted layoffs in its Kenyan and Nigerian offices, despite reporting global profitability of approximately $30 million for 2025. This move highlights a broader strategic shift in the African fintech sector, where companies are prioritizing lean operations and sustainable profitability over aggressive, cash-burning expansion, even as funding conditions begin to improve.
Why it matters
This is a significant signal about the maturation of the African fintech market. The era of 'growth at all costs' is definitively over. Even profitable companies are re-evaluating their cost structures and focusing on unit economics. For operators and investors, this shows that operational efficiency and a clear path to sustainable profit are now the key metrics of success, not just user numbers or geographic footprint.
Following its recent move to force developers onto a new Checkout API, Shopify is once again flexing its ecosystem power. The platform's expanded native B2B storefront capabilities, rolled out through the first half of 2026, are now mature enough to threaten specialized wholesale platforms. Mid-market brands are increasingly consolidating their direct-to-consumer and wholesale operations onto a single Shopify Plus instance, heavily pressuring incumbents like Handshake and NuOrder.
Why it matters
As we saw with the checkout API overhaul, this is a masterclass in platform consolidation. By absorbing more B2B functionality into its core offering, Shopify simplifies infrastructure for merchants but fundamentally erodes the business case for third-party wholesale apps. It underscores the ongoing existential risk for developers building on the periphery of major platforms.
Goldman Sachs upgraded restaurant tech platform Toast to 'buy' from 'neutral' on Thursday, raising its price target to $36. The bank cited Toast's strong product offering and the launch of its new AI-enabled marketing services, 'Toast IQ Grow,' as key drivers. Goldman believes the company is well-positioned for continued market share gains and total addressable market (TAM) expansion, despite recent stock underperformance.
Why it matters
This upgrade reinforces the thesis that vertically integrated platforms like Toast are prime candidates to win with AI. Instead of a generalized model, Toast is deploying AI for a specific, high-value merchant problem: marketing and customer growth. This is a strong signal that the market is beginning to reward tangible, ROI-focused AI applications embedded in operational software, rather than just standalone AI hype.
Following the recent Kenyan and Northern Nigerian expansions by Moniepoint and OPay we've been tracking, GTBank's fintech arm HabariPay is launching a direct assault on their home turf. The bank is deploying 200,000 new Point-of-Sale terminals and eliminating processing fees for eligible merchants in a bid to rapidly capture market share.
Why it matters
This is a major strategic escalation in Nigeria's payments war. A traditional banking giant is leveraging its balance sheet to attack the core revenue stream of the fintechs that have been eating its lunch. A zero-fee strategy is a powerful, if potentially unsustainable, customer acquisition tool. For operators, this is a live case study in how incumbents can fight back, weaponizing their scale to compress fintech margins and force a competitive response.
Adding to the enterprise AI pushback we've been tracking, Salesforce shares are under pressure after receiving downgrades from both KeyBanc and Bernstein. Analysts cite channel checks indicating that customers are not ready for its Agentforce AI platform. The core issues are that enterprise data is not sufficiently organized for AI deployment, and Agentforce itself is perceived as too immature for broad adoption, leading CIOs to deprioritize spending on it.
Why it matters
We previously noted enterprises pivoting from AI experimentation to demanding measurable ROI. This downgrade is a direct manifestation of that shift, demonstrating that even for a software giant like Salesforce, the biggest barrier to AI revenue isn't the model, but customer data readiness. It signals a delayed return on massive AI investments, forcing vendors to double down on data preparation services before they can sell higher-value agentic features.
A new forecast from Juniper Research projects that the number of global agentic commerce users will surge from under 300 million in 2026 to 1.3 billion by 2031, with transaction values potentially hitting $3.5 trillion. Despite this explosive growth forecast, the report highlights two major hurdles: low consumer trust in AI for making purchases and a payment infrastructure that remains too card-centric to support local payment methods globally.
Why it matters
This forecast puts a hard number on the scale of the agentic commerce opportunity while highlighting the critical infrastructure gaps. For payment operators, the key takeaway is that the current card-based rails are insufficient for a truly global, agent-driven world. Winning in this new paradigm will require building infrastructure that supports a wide array of local payment methods, addressing a major bottleneck for scaling agentic commerce outside of developed Western markets.
South Africa's dominant e-commerce player, Takealot Group, is making a concerted push into the country's informal economy, a market estimated to be worth between R750 billion and R1 trillion. The company is deploying a Township Economy Initiative and a Personal Shopper Programme to expand its reach into rural and township areas, aiming to overcome historical barriers of access and trust.
Why it matters
This is a critical move for digital commerce in South Africa. Cracking the informal market is the next major growth frontier, but it requires new models for logistics, payments, and customer acquisition that go beyond standard e-commerce playbooks. For fintech operators, Takealot's strategy will be a key indicator of how digital payment behaviors can be cultivated in cash-dominant communities.
A phenomenon known as 'disc rot' is posing a silent, irreversible threat to physical video game collections. The chemical process, where the reflective aluminum layer on optical discs oxidizes over time, renders the data unreadable. This physical degradation threatens not only the financial value of collections but also risks erasing entire chapters of video game history, adding urgency to digital preservation and emulation efforts as physical media inevitably decay.
Why it matters
This highlights the fundamental fragility of our digital cultural heritage. Unlike cartridges, optical media have a finite, and often surprisingly short, lifespan. It's a stark reminder that 'owning' a physical copy is no guarantee of long-term access, and reinforces the critical role of software preservationists, archivists, and even the emulation scene in preventing a digital dark age for gaming history.
SaaS Incumbents Respond to the 'Agentic Threat' Major SaaS players are actively countering the narrative that AI agents will make them obsolete. Salesforce is positioning its platform as the essential 'control layer' for agentic work, while Shopify is consolidating its value by building native B2B features that challenge third-party apps. This suggests a strategic pivot where platforms aim to become the indispensable infrastructure for orchestrating AI, not just tools that AI replaces.
The 'Data Readiness' Gap is the Real AI Bottleneck Despite the hype around AI platforms like Salesforce's Agentforce, analyst downgrades and field reports reveal a significant obstacle: customers' data is often not clean, structured, or ready for AI. This 'data readiness' gap is slowing adoption and forcing a practical reckoning, shifting the focus from AI models to the foundational data infrastructure and governance required to make them work.
African Fintech Innovation Begins to Export A notable trend is emerging where fintech solutions honed in Africa's challenging market environments are now being exported to developed markets. South African BNPL provider Float's expansion to the UK exemplifies this, demonstrating that innovations built for constrained, emerging-market conditions can possess a competitive edge globally.
A Great Sorting in South Africa's Crowded Payments Market South Africa's payment landscape is dense with options, from traditional cards to myriad digital wallets and real-time payment rails like PayShap. However, this innovation has created fragmentation and consumer confusion. The market now faces a consolidation and education challenge, where interoperability and user trust—not just technology—will determine which payment methods achieve mainstream adoption.
Grocers and Retailers Focus AI on Back-End ROI In retail, the most impactful AI deployments are happening in the back-end, not in flashy consumer-facing apps. Grocers and other retailers are prioritizing AI for operational challenges like demand forecasting, inventory management, and pricing optimization, where the return on investment is clearer and more immediate than in customer-facing experiments.
What to Expect
2026-07-28—Euromonitor International hosts the 'Eyes on Africa 2026' forum in Johannesburg to discuss consumer trends and digital growth.
2026-08-06—NCR Voyix (VYX) is expected to report its quarterly earnings.
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