Week 19 - GameStop wants to buy eBay, Amazon goes grocery and Prime Day moves up, plus the AI readiness gap nobody's talking about

Max: Welcome to the Checkout Point, your quick dive into this week's e-commerce buzz with me, Alex, powered by Blicket. These 20 minutes pack the latest trends, news and insights. Let's navigate the digital marketplace together. Ready? Let's go. Rachel: Welcome back to the Checkout Point. I'm here with Rachel and Max. this week's lineup is genuinely wild. Speaker 3: Hey everyone, and Max is not exaggerating for once. Rachel: For once, right? So look, we've got four segments packed with stuff that actually matters if you're in e-commerce right now. Speaker 3: Let's start with the one that made my jaw drop. GameStop. Yes, that GameStop just dropped a fifty-six billion dollar bid for Rachel: Wow. Speaker 3: eBay. Rachel: Wait, $56 billion? I mean, come on. We are going to dig into whether Ryan Cohen is a genius or just swinging very, very hard. Speaker 3: Right. And while that drama's playing out, Whatnot quietly plugged into Shopify and honestly, that move might matter more long term. Rachel: Speaking of Amazon, they're claiming the number two grocery spot in the U.S., over $150 billion in grocery sales. sales, and most of it without real physical stores. Speaker 3: Just casually becoming the second largest grocer. No big deal. Rachel: And Prime Day is moving to June now, so if you're a seller, your timeline just got crunched. That's wild, right? Speaker 3: Yeah, sellers are already stressed. And then there's Shopify quietly applying for money transmitter licenses, pushing deeper into fintech. Rachel: Shopify is not sitting still. Speaker 3: Not even a little. And we wrap things up with the AI investing. lasting story that's kind of uncomfortable. 73% of e-commerce leaders putting real money into AI, but admitting they're not ready for where it's going. Rachel: Spending the money, not sure what to do with it. We've all been there. Speaker 3: We really have. Okay, lots to get through. Rachel: Alright, let's kick things off with the story everyone's talking about. GameStop, eBay, and what it actually means for where e-commerce is headed. Three easy ways to get your questions to us. Check the description for our web form, text us at 747-293-4612, However you reach out, we can't wait to hear from you. Okay, so I have to start with this because I genuinely read the headline three times and still didn't believe it. GameStop is trying to buy eBay. Speaker 3: Yeah, GameStop, the mall store that nearly killed. Rachel: The one where people still bring in PlayStation 2 games hoping for 20 bucks? Speaker 3: And they want to spend $56 billion on eBay. Rachel: Fifty-six billion. That's wild, right? Speaker 3: According to the Wall Street Journal, GameStop has been quietly building a stake in eBay and CEO Ryan Cohen reportedly wants to turn this into a $100 billion company. Rachel: Wait, 100 billion? GameStop? Speaker 3: That's what PYMNTS reported this week and if eBay isn't into it, Cohen could take it hostile. Rachel: Oh, wow, so this isn't just a rumor, like there's actual teeth here. Speaker 3: There's teeth. The thing is, eBay is valued around $46 billion, which means eBay is nearly four times the size of GameStop right now, which Rachel: So GameStop is trying to buy something four times its size. I Speaker 3: would be ambitious, to put it gently. Rachel: mean, come on, is this real strategy, or is Ryan Cohen just being Ryan Cohen? Speaker 3: Honestly, I think it's both. Like, here's the thing. Cohen has a track record of big swings. He did it with Chewy. He did it with GameStop itself. Rachel: True, you can't dismiss him. Speaker 3: But the timing is interesting because eBay is not a distressed asset right now, not even close. Rachel: Right, so Ina Steiner published a piece on this Friday, and eBay's Q1 numbers are genuinely strong. GMV up 18% year over year, hitting $22.2 billion. Speaker 3: 18%? That's not a little bounce. Rachel: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Steiner's piece basically says this growth is not. is not a fluke. eBay is out of the doldrums for real. Speaker 3: Which means if GameStop wants it, they're buying it full price, maybe above. Rachel: Exactly. And there are 16 million what eBay calls enthusiast buyers, people buying six days or more with over $800 in spend. The question is, does Cohen see something others don't, or is this a massive overpay? Speaker 3: I'm on both sides a little bit. On one hand, eBay plus GameStop's collectibles reputation This reputation actually makes some sense. Gaming, Rachel: Oh, Speaker 3: trading cards, vintage stuff. Rachel: that's a good point. GameStop has gone deep on collectibles. Speaker 3: On the other hand, the execution risk on a hostile Fifty-six billion takeover from a company that small is, I don't know, Rachel: Enormous. Speaker 3: Enormous, Yeah. Rachel: So anyway, Speaking of platforms trying to grow into new places, Whatnot just did something pretty quietly this week that I think gets overlooked. Or look next to the GameStop chaos. Speaker 3: The Shopify integration. Rachel: Yes! So Whatnot, the live shopping app, launched a direct plug-in for Shopify. According to Retail Brew and Modern Retail covering this on Wednesday, Shopify merchants can now sync their products, inventory, and orders automatically to Whatnot. Speaker 3: So no more duplicating your whole catalog manually. Rachel: Previously, that's exactly what sellers had to do, build a whole separate tech layer just to go live on Whatnot. not. Speaker 3: That friction was real. I've talked to sellers who just gave up on live shopping because the setup cost wasn't worth it. Rachel: And this removes that. You've already got your Shopify store. You just connect it. Speaker 3: Whatnot has like a genuinely engaged community, too. It's not one of those platforms that launched live shopping and got crickets. Rachel: Right. So pairing that community with Shopify's merchant network is actually a smart move. Millions of potential sellers now have an easy path to live. The live commerce. Speaker 3: The question is whether mainstream Shopify merchants actually show up, or if Whatnot stays a niche for collectors and sneakerheads. Rachel: Totally fair. The integration solves the supply side problem, finding the sellers. Demand side, that's still a culture shift. Speaker 3: And culture shifts take time. Rachel: They do, but the pipe is there now. Speaker 3: So you've got GameStop swinging for $56 billion to own an older marketplace, and Whatnot quietly building a new one through partnerships. Two totally different bets on where e-commerce goes. Rachel: One loud, one quiet. Speaker 3: And honestly, I'm more curious about the quiet one. Rachel: Same. Okay, so with all this movement around who owns what, Max: and where shoppers are going, it makes you wonder which players are actually winning the volume game right now, like who is quietly putting up numbers that nobody expected. Rachel: Yeah, and one company in particular has been making some very bold claims about just how dominant it's become. Max: And the answer might genuinely surprise you. Speaker 3: Short pause. Rachel: So speaking of unexpected volume, Amazon just quietly dropped a claim that kind of breaks your brain. Speaker 3: Oh yeah? Hit me. Rachel: So according to a piece from Catherine Douglas Moran, Amazon is now calling itself the second largest grocer retailer in the U.S. Speaker 3: Wait, really? Like, for real? Rachel: For real. Over $150 billion in gross sales last year. Speaker 3: Wow. Rachel: Second largest. Full stop. Speaker 3: That's wild, right? Because when I think Amazon grocery, I'm thinking Whole Foods and... And what, like a handful of fresh stores? Rachel: Exactly, and that's the kicker. Most of that volume is online, not physical stores. They got there without building out a massive retail footprint. Speaker 3: I mean, come on, that is a crazy flex. Kroger and Walmart are out here with thousands of stores and Amazon's just like, nah, we'll do it from the warehouse. Rachel: Pretty much. And it says something about where grocery is actually going, right? The store is optional if your logistics are good enough. Speaker 3: Okay, so then there's the Q1 numbers, and Rachel, they are not messing around. ground highest Rachel: No, they are not. Ina Steiner reported that Amazon's North American sales grew twelve percent in Q1, but the number that really stood out to me was unicrowth. Speaker 3: since the tail end of the pandemic lockdowns like the last time they saw growth like that everyone was stuck at home ordering everything online so Rachel: Right? And now they're hitting those numbers again in a totally different environment. That's not a fluke. That's a signal. Speaker 3: consumers are buying more stuff more often which brings me to Prime Day Prime Day Rachel: Oh, Speaker 3: right so Chain Store Age reported Prime Day is moving to June this year June not July totally Rachel: And for sellers, that is not a small thing. You're basically compressing your entire Q2 prep timeline. Speaker 3: if you were planning to use July as your push you now have less runway inventory decisions ad budgets promotions all of it needs to move up Rachel: Hmm, I wonder how much of this is Amazon wanting to get ahead of the back-to-school season versus something more strategic. strategic. Speaker 3: Could be both, honestly. Pull forward consumer spend, own June before anyone else does. Smart, if a little nerve-wracking for sellers who aren't paying attention. Rachel: Yeah, if you're a seller and you're just finding out about this now, good luck. Speaker 3: Laughing. No pressure. Rachel: So anyway, let's close on the AI piece because this is where it gets interesting for the platform story. Speaker 3: Rufus. Rachel: Rufus. So PYMNTS had a piece about Amazon's Q1 earnings call. And it sounded less like a retail update and more like an AI briefing. Max: Yeah, the whole framing was around agentic commerce, like the idea that AI agents are going to do the shopping for you. Rachel: And Rufus is Amazon's play there. Max: Mm-hmm. Rachel: It's their AI shopping assistant that's already inside the Amazon app. Max: The pitch is Rufus knows your purchase history, knows what you need, and can help you find the right thing faster. Rachel: Which sounds great, but like the trust question is huge, right? You're basically handing your shopping decisions to an algorithm. Max: I mean, I get the appeal. If I never have to scroll through 400 listings for a phone charger again, I'm in. Rachel: Fair point, fair point. But the reason this matters strategically is Amazon is essentially saying whoever owns the agent layer owns the sale. If Rufus is the first touchpoint, the discovery happens inside Amazon before you ever see a competitor. Sure. Max: That is a big deal for third-party sellers, too, because it shifts the question from how do I rank in search to how do I get recommended by the AI. Rachel: Exactly. And PYMNTS noted Amazon sees this as a real edge in the agent commerce race, not just a feature, a strategic position. Max: And that framing, the race to own the agent layer, is something you're seeing across the whole industry, not just Amazon. Rachel: And speaking of other platforms running that same race from a very different angle Shopify has got some moves we need to talk about. Max: Big ones. Rachel: Big ones. Max: Okay, so flip the script on Amazon for a sec. While Amazon's building its agent layer, Shopify is quietly trying to become a bank? Rachel: I mean, not literally a bank, but kind of. Reuters reported this week that Shopify is applying for money transmitter licenses and seeking regulatory approval for prepaid access capabilities. Max: Which sounds dry until you think about what it actually means. Speaker 3: means. Rachel: Right. So Shopify already has Shopify Payments, Shopify Balance, merchant cash advances. They've been creeping into fintech for years. Speaker 3: And now they want to move money directly, not just process payments through someone else's rails. Rachel: PYMNTS had a good read on this. The idea is that if you're already the operating system for millions of merchants, why let a bank sit between you and your sellers? That's Max: wild, right? Like, Shopify started as build a store in a weekend, and now we're talking money transmitter licenses. Rachel: The ambition is something else. And look, the merchants who live inside Shopify all day, they would actually use this, keep the cash flow in one place. Max: Okay, so on the flip side of that, there's also something happening at the checkout level. The reAlpha AI Chat integration reported by PYMNTS. Speaker 3: Yes. Rachel: Oh, yeah. So this is in-chat checkout. You're talking to a support bot, you ask about a product, and you can just buy it right there in the conversation. Speaker 3: No redirects, no new tabs. Rachel: Exactly. And the same chat thread converts into a support ticket with order tracking. So sales and service are in one flow. Speaker 3: Wait, so the service chat is the storefront now? Rachel: Yeah, for Shopify sellers, yeah. That's the direction. Stock Titan covered the mechanics of it. The chat persists, so the whole journey lives in one place. Speaker 3: Honestly, that's the piece that changes merchant operations more than people realize. Support teams are now also a sales channel? Rachel: Completely. And it connects to the bigger thing Shopify published about agentic Like they put out a whole guide on how their merchants can sell through ChatGPT, through Google's AI mode, through Copilot. Max: So an AI agent is browsing for you and Shopify wants to be the store that agent lands on. Rachel: Bingo. And here's what's interesting. Shopify says the merchants who get found by these agents are the ones with clean product data, strong metadata, good inventory signals. Speaker 3: So SEO, but for robots. Rachel: Basically, which is a weird sentence, but yes, the technical foundation matters now more than ever because the agent is making the call, not the human browsing. Speaker 3: And most merchants have no idea this is happening yet? Rachel: No, and that gap is real. We're seeing this. Max: pattern where the platforms are moving fast and the sellers are still catching up. Rachel: So you've got Shopify trying to own the financial layer, own the checkout moment, own the agent discovery layer. Max: All three, and it's not subtle. Rachel: Amazon doing the same thing from their side, just at a different scale. Max: Right. Two very different companies running parallel playbooks. One top-down, one bottom-up. Rachel: Which honestly raises the question, is anyone in e-commerce actually ready for how fast... Fast, this is all moving? Max: And that is not a rhetorical question, because there's data on it. And the answer is not great. Rachel: Uh-oh. Max: Seventy-three percent of e-commerce leaders investing in AI say they're not prepared for what comes next. That stat dropped this week, and it kind of puts everything we've been talking about into context. Rachel: So the investment is happening, the readiness is lagging, and on top of that, fraud is scaling up right alongside AI adoption. ADOPTION. Max: Which is not a coincidence; the same tools enabling smarter shopping are enabling smarter fraud. We'll get into all of that right after this. Rachel: Okay, so speaking of that readiness gap Rachel flagged, Pattern Group put out research this week and the number is just blunt: Max: Seventy-three% Rachel: Seventy-three% of e-commerce leaders investing in AI say their orgs are not ready for what comes next, and these aren't companies sitting on the sidelines. Max: No, they're spending. According to Pattern Group research, AI spending averages over $291,626 globally right now, Rachel: Wow. Max: and it's expected to climb to around $323,886. by end of 2026. Rachel: So they're putting real money in and three quarters of them are basically going, we have no idea what we're doing. Max: I mean, at least they're being honest. Rachel: Right? That's almost refreshing. But it does tell you something about where the industry actually is versus where the headlines say it is. Everyone's talking about AI agents changing commerce overnight. And PYMNTS had a report out this week showing 43% of retailers are already. Ready Piloting AI Shopping Agents. So it's not theoretical. Max: Mm-hmm. Rachel: AI agents are making purchasing decisions on behalf of consumers, and most merchants don't even have the infrastructure to show up in that channel yet. Max: Wait, like the agent is buying before the shopper even opens a browser? Rachel: That's the direction. The agent searches, compares, decides. You as the merchant might not even know that's how the sale happened. Max: Okay, so if your product data is messy, your pricing isn't structured, your f- Your feeds are a disaster. Rachel: The agent skips you entirely, Max: Exactly. And you just lost a customer you didn't know you had. Rachel: which is why that Seventy-three% number feels so urgent. It's not just a readiness gap. It's a revenue gap hiding underneath it. Max: Right. And then you layer on the fraud piece, and it gets even messier. Rachel: Oh man, so BW Businessworld covered a report from Bureau, an AI-powered risk platform. They analyzed Seventy million users over a Ten-day window. window Max: Seventy million? Okay. Rachel: And what they found is that the kind of coordinated fraud networks that used to target banking are now fully embedded in e-commerce platforms. Max: Not surprising, but still gross. Rachel: The timing is the thing, right? AI lowers the barrier to building these networks, so adoption goes up, fraud scales right alongside it. Max: And the same growth features that attract legitimate sellers like easy onboarding, fast checkout... Without marketplace reach, those are exactly the services being exploited. Rachel: Yeah, they don't discriminate between good actors and bad ones. Max: So what's the practical takeaway here for sellers? Rachel: Honestly, the opportunity is real. AI tools, agentic commerce, all of it. But you can't just plug in and hope for the best. Get your product data clean, understand how agents actually discover and rank products, and take fraud seriously as a... is a cost of doing business in this environment, not an afterthought. Max: And maybe don't be embarrassed if you're in that 73%. Acknowledging the gap is the first step to closing it. Rachel: Right, right. The dangerous ones are the 27% who think they've got it all figured out. Max: Oh, definitely. Those are the ones in for a surprise. Rachel: Big week for e-commerce. Lot of moving pieces and it feels like we're right at the moment where the smart moves are the boring ones. Clean data, solid infrastructure, fraud controls. Max: Fundamentals, honestly—they never get old. Rachel: Never do. Okay, so what a week, Rachel. Max: Seriously, I don't even know where to start. Rachel: I mean, GameStop trying to buy eBay? I still can't get over it. Bold move or fever dream? Honestly, maybe both. Max: Both, definitely both. But the one that stuck with me is the Amazon grocery story. Over 150 billion in grocery sales and barely any physical stores. That's the kind of number that makes you rethink. everything. Rachel: Right? And then layer on the AI stuff. Rufus, agents doing the shopping for you? The whole discovery layer is shifting fast. Max: It is. And Shopify quietly going after fintech licenses while plugging into live commerce like the platform that's being made right now are going to matter a lot in two years. Rachel: Mm-hmm, yeah. If there's one thing from today, it's this. The infrastructure decisions happening quick. Listening quietly are the ones worth watching," Max: Exactly. Rachel: said Max: Not just the flashy headlines. Rachel: the woman who also enjoyed the GameStop headline. Max: I mean, I'm human. Rachel: All right, if you've got value from this, subscribe and leave us a review. It genuinely helps. Max: Thanks for being here. See you next week.