Week 21 - Amazon gets a serious AI upgrade, Shopify lands $100M, and WooCommerce stores are under attack

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 Max, here with Rachel, and oh man, we have a packed episode today, keeping it real. Speaker 3: Hey, Max. Yeah, seriously, this week is absolutely stacked. Like, I don't even know where we start. Rachel: Right, so let's just rip right into it. Amazon is making two massive moves at once this week. I mean, come on. Speaker 3: Two at once? That's peak Amazon, right? Rachel: Right? They launched Alexa for shopping, which basically fuses Alexa and their old search tool, Rufus, into one AI assistant. And then, oh, they're also rolling out 30-minute delivery to dozens of U.S. cities. That's wild, right? Speaker 3: 30 minutes? I mean, come on, that's faster than I can decide what to order. Rachel: Honestly, same. You know what I mean? So we're digging into both of those. Speaker 3: And we've got the whole AI agents moment happening. TikTok just dropped AI agents inside their ad platform. And meanwhile, China's e-commerce giants are literally replacing search with conversational AI for 900 million users. Rachel: Wait, 900 million? No way. Speaker 3: 900 million, according to the South China Morning Post. That number. This number actually stopped me cold. Rachel: That's wild, right? And here's the thing, Mirakl projecting AI agents will handle 90% of B2B buying by 2028, $15 trillion at stake. You know what I mean? Speaker 3: 15 trillion. So, you know, no pressure on merchants to figure this out. Rachel: No pressure at all. And speaking of which, Thrive Capital just dropped $100 million on Shopify. Bloomberg broke that one. Smart money betting hard on AI reshaping the whole infrastructure. That's the signal. Speaker 3: Love seeing that kind of conviction in the space. But here's the thing. We've also got a security story that every WooCommerce store owner needs to hear right now. Rachel: Yeah, a critical FunnelKit vulnerability is actively being exploited right now. Over 40,000 stores hit. Payment data being skimmed at checkout. Here's the thing, it's happening today. Speaker 3: And Visa Research dropped today showing 76% of shoppers have already abandoned a purchase because checkout was just too much friction. So you've got security and simplicity both urgent at the exact same time. Rachel: All right, that's the show. Let's get into it starting with Amazon's big week. Keep up. Three easy ways to get your questions to us. Check the description for a web form, text us at 747-293-4612, or call the same number to leave a voice question. However you reach out, we can't wait to hear from you. Okay, so Rachel, I have to start with this one because it genuinely stopped me in my tracks. Amazon Now, 30 minutes or less. You know what I mean? And they're rolling it out to dozens of cities. Speaker 3: Wait, like actually 30 minutes? Rachel: Yeah, right now it's live in Seattle, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Dallas-Fort Worth. And by the end of 2026, they're targeting tens of millions of people. I mean, that's wild, right? Retail Dive covered it Tuesday. Speaker 3: That's wild, right? I mean, I remember when two-day shipping felt like the future. Now it's basically slow. Rachel: Right? And now we're talking 30 minutes for household stuff, personal care, groceries. Here's the thing. Retail Dive mentioned Amazon's using smaller fulfillment locations closer to customers to make it work. Speaker 3: Okay, so here's the thing for me. That model works if you're Amazon. You have the money, the logistics, the data. But what does this actually do to everyone else trying to compete? Rachel: Honestly, it's rough for them. You can't just spin up a 30-Minute delivery network overnight. I mean, come on. Speaker 3: Right. And here's what worries me. Consumers are going to start expecting that speed everywhere. That becomes the baseline overnight. Rachel: Totally. Expectation creep. Once Amazon trains you to want something in 30 minutes, waiting two days feels like a punishment. Speaker 3: So anyway, it's not just speed, right? Because the... The other thing Amazon dropped this week is massive. Rachel: Oh yeah. So Wednesday, Amazon announced Alexa for shopping. This is their new AI shopping assistant built right into the search bar. Lauren Forristal at TechCrunch had the breakdown, and it's not what you'd expect, you know? Speaker 3: And this just replaces Rufus, right? That AI assistant they launched in 2024? Gone already? Rachel: Exactly. Rufus is gone. Alexa for shopping is taking over. overpowered by Alexa Plus, you know what I mean? Voice first. Speaker 3: So what actually shifts for people buying stuff? Rachel: So basically it's voice and touch across mobile, desktop, and Echo Show smart displays. PYMNTS reported they're rolling it out to all U.S. customers within the next week. And for the first time, the full Amazon store experience is on Echo Show. That's a big deal. Speaker 3: Wait, really? So you're shopping from your kitchen counter now? Rachel: Yeah, basically, you're standing there making coffee and just buying stuff. Speaker 3: Amazon's dream scenario. Rachel: A hundred percent. And it's not just browsing, right? The PYMNTS piece highlighted that Alexa for shopping is supposed to give personalized recommendations, handle the whole shopping flow across Amazon and other retailers. That's wild. Speaker 3: Hmm, I'm kind of torn on this one, you know? Like, the convenience part is legit, but the more automatic and personalized it gets? Rachel: You start buying things you didn't know you needed. Exactly. Speaker 3: Yeah, or stuff you definitely didn't need. But from a merchant side, who's controlling what even gets shown? That's the real question. Rachel: That's the real question, Right? If an AI is making purchase decisions for you, the brands and sellers that the AI services win. Everyone else is invisible. Here's the thing. That's a problem for small brands. Speaker 3: Mhm, small brands especially. You can't exactly sit down with an algorithm and make your case. Yes. Rachel: Right. And this connects to the bigger picture. Speaking of which, Mexico Business News reported this week that Amazon also launched Amazon Supply Chain Services, freight, warehousing, the whole logistics stack offered as a platform. Speaker 3: So they're not just selling you stuff anymore. They're basically becoming the whole infrastructure layer for retail. Rachel: Yeah. Speed AI logistics. It's all moving in the same direction at once, you know? That's what gets me. Speaker 3: I mean, come on. That's a lot of surface area for any company. Any competitor to go up against. Rachel: And here's the thing: Amazon's betting that the voice interface is the winning play for where shopping goes next-not just search, not even a chatbot in a sidebar. Speaker 3: Voice first shopping, and they've only Speaker 4: just begun. Max: You've already got Alexa everywhere: Echo Show, the app. They basically own the distribution already. Rachel: Exactly. The PYMNTS piece on Thursday framed it really well. They said Amazon and Walmart are both moving past smarter search toward voice as the key interface for what's coming next in commerce. Here's the thing. That's the move. Max: Right, right. So it's not about convenience anymore. It's about who owns that moment between you and the purchase. Who controls that conversation? Rachel: That's exactly it. Whoever controls that conversation controls the transaction. Max: And Amazon just made a very loud statement about who they think that should be. Rachel: Shocking. Max: So here's what I keep coming back to, you know? Amazon is going all in on voice and AI agents as the shopping interface of the future. But is that actually a bet specific to Amazon or is something bigger happening? Rachel: Yeah, like what happens when the entire commerce ecosystem starts running on AI agents making decisions autonomously, and not just in the U.S. I mean, come on. Max: I mean, that's a much bigger question than just Amazon's product announcement. Rachel: It really is, because some of the most aggressive experiments happening right now with AI agents in commerce, and this is the crazy part, they're not coming from Seattle. Max: Okay, where are they coming from? Rachel: That's exactly what we're getting into next. Sure. Max: And here's the thing. Amazon is far from alone. China is literally living in that future right now. Rachel: Right? Like, the South China Morning Post had this piece this week about how China's tech giants are literally rewriting the whole e-commerce playbook around AI agents. 900 million e-commerce users, you know what I mean? Max: 900 million. Rachel: Wow. Max: That's not a test group. That's a full-scale rollout. Rachel: And the experience has shifted completely. The piece describes this finance guy in Hong Kong chatting with Alibaba's Qwen AI assistant, and instead of typing keywords and scrolling through endless listings, he's just having a conversation, gets a few curated options back. That's wild, right? Max: So the whole search and scroll ritual is basically going away. Rachel: That's the bet. And it's not just Alibaba. JD.com, Baidu, they're all moving in the same direction. Here's the thing. Rigid search terms replaced by natural dialogue. Dialogue. Max: Speaking of which, TikTok dropped something pretty wild this week, too. At their TikTok World Ad Summit, according to PYMNTS, they launched the TikTok Ads Model Context Protocol. Rachel: Which is a mouthful. Max: It really is a mouthful, but here's what it actually means. Running a TikTok campaign used to mean a media buyer sitting in a dashboard, manually setting up creatives, adjusting bids, moving budgets around. Now. AI agents just do all that work. Rachel: Wait, like fully autonomous? No way! Max: The system connects AI agents directly to TikTok's ad platform. They can plan, launch and optimize campaigns without human intervention. Rachel: So the media buyer's getting automated out of the loop. I mean, come on. Max: At minimum, their job changes a lot. And the interesting thing is this is happening at the ad infrastructure level. It's not a chatbot bolted on top. Top. It's baked in. Rachel: Okay, so we've got China rewriting consumer shopping through conversational agents, TikTok automating ad operations, where does Amazon fit in now? That's the question. Max: Payments had a good read on this one. Amazon and Walmart are basically placing completely different bets. Rachel: Amazon's going voice-first with Alexa for shopping. Walmart is taking a totally different path. And Amazon retiring Rufus to go all in on Alexa suggests they think voice is going Speaker 4: to be the next big thing. Rachel: think voice is the winning interface for agented commerce long term. Here's the thing. They're all in. Max: That's the read. Voice is the primary entry point now, not just another search bar. Rachel: Which brings up the B2B angle, because this isn't just a consumer story. Speaking of which, Mirakl put out a readiness framework this week, and the numbers in there are pretty eye-opening. Max: Oh yeah, go ahead. Rachel: So Mirakl is saying AI agents are projected to intermediate 90% of B2B buying by 2028, by 2028, and they're estimating, get this, $15 trillion flowing through autonomous purchasing. Max: Fifteen trillion dollars, you know what I mean? That's not pocket change. Rachel: through autonomous purchasing, and they make the point that the gap between companies that are ready and companies that aren't are already showing up. High-maturity B2B suppliers are beating annual sales goals by a 110% greater margin than their low-maturity competitors. That's not small. Max: Hmm, I mean, that's a serious number, but I... But I get it. If an AI agent is doing the buying and your product data is a mess, you're just invisible. Rachel: That's exactly it. Here's the thing. The Mirakl Framework breaks it into three layers. They call it Presence, Access, and Experience. Presence is whether your products can even be found by an AI. Access is whether the agent can actually transact with you. And experience is whether your catalog is structured well enough for an agent to make sense of. Max: So it's not enough anymore to just have a website. Your whole catalogue basically has to be readable by AI Rachel: Basically, and then speaking of which, Practical eCommerce pointed to Anthropic's Project Deal experiment as a preview of where this goes. They demonstrated AI agents buying and selling in a narrowly focused marketplace, like actually transacting. Max: Agents doing deals; no humans required! Rachel: Which sounds sci fi, but is happening in controlled environments right now. I mean, that's wild, right? Max: So for a merchant listening, what's the actual move this move this week. Like one concrete thing to focus on. Rachel: Honestly, here's the thing. Go look at your product data. Is your catalog structured cleanly? Clear titles, accurate attributes, good descriptions? Because when an AI agent is scanning options to recommend to a buyer, messy data equals getting skipped. Max: Low-tech answer to a high-tech problem. Rachel: Sometimes that's exactly the right answer, you know? Clean data is the foundation. Everything else builds on top of it. Max: And speaking of the serious bets being placed on where AI commerce goes from here, there's a $100M vote of confidence that just landed this week. Speaker 3: Uh-huh. Shopify. Max: Thrive Capital backing Shopify. And that's where we're going next. Rachel: All right, shifting gears, here's the thing. The investor community has been watching AI and e-commerce closely, but this week someone put serious money where the thesis is. Max: Josh Kushner's Thrive Capital? $100 million into Shopify. PYMNTS reported it Thursday. I mean, that's a signal you can't ignore. Rachel: 100 million. And Thrive isn't just some random fund, right? These are the people who raised over $10 billion for their Thrive Capital vehicle earlier this year. Here, I mean, come on. Max: Right. And they typically back early stage tech startups. So dropping this kind of money into Shopify, a public company, that's not random. That's a deliberate bet. Rachel: It really is, and Seeking Alpha noted the investment sent shares climbing into Thursday's close. That's wild, right? Max: Okay, so. But what's actually being bet on here? Because Shopify is already massive, right? Rachel: The bet is that AI reshapes how merchants run their stores, and specifically how commerce gets built and executed. Here's the thing. Thrive is saying Shopify is positioned to own a chunk of that. Max: Which makes total sense, given what we've been tracking this whole episode, right? Every single conversation has basically been about AI taking over more of the buying and selling process. Rachel: Exactly. And Shopify has been building out their AI tools pretty aggressively over the last couple of years, you know, so the infrastructure is already there. Max: I do wonder, though, is Thrive genuinely backing Shopify's roadmap here, or is this more of a broader AI is the future of eCommerce bet and Shopify is just the vehicle? Rachel: Probably both, honestly, you know what I mean? Max: Fair. Rachel: But the signal that matters, smart money is looking at eCommerce infrastructure and saying AI is where the returns are going to come from. That's no nothing, you know what I mean? Max: No, it really isn't. And honestly, after everything we've talked about today, the pattern is pretty clear. Amazon's moving on speed and AI search, TikTok's automating ad buying, China's going fully conversational, and now a tier one VC drops 100M on Shopify's AI future? That's the momentum. Rachel: The dots are connecting fast, like really fast. Max: Very fast. So if you're a merchant sitting on the fence about whether to care about AI, I don't know what else you need to hear. Rachel: Right? Here's the thing: the message from every corner of the industry this week is the tools are here, the money is moving, and the platforms are building fast. Max: And the merchants who wait, they're going to be catching up instead of actually competing. Rachel: Totally. Okay, so here's the flip side, though, and this is a pretty sharp contrast, you know? Max: Right Rachel: While investors are feeling optimistic about the future of e-commerce infrastructure, Max: now, today, store owners are getting their checkout data stolen. Rachel: yeah, a critical vulnerability in the FunnelKit Funnel Builder plugin, which runs on over 40,000 WooCommerce stores, is being actively exploited right now. That's wild. Max: Actively, not patched. Someone is literally skimming payment data right this second. Second. Rachel: According to the Hacker News and Gbhackers, attackers injected fake Google Tag Manager scripts to steal checkout payment info. Real nasty stuff, you know? Max: So while everyone's debating the future of agentic commerce, the present has a pretty urgent problem sitting right here. Rachel: If you're running WooCommerce with FunnelKit, you need to check your plug in version today: the patch is version three point one five point zero point three. Don't wait. Max: Decisively update it today, not eventually. Eventually. Rachel: That's the move. And honestly, it's a good reminder that Checkout is both the most exciting battleground in e-commerce right now and the most vulnerable. Here's the thing. Max: A hundred million vote of confidence on one side, active exploits on the other. That's the week in e-commerce, you know what I mean? Rachel: It pretty much sums it up, right? Stick around. We're going deeper on checkout security and what else you need to know to protect your store. Okay, so while we were all geeking out on AI and Shopify money moves, here's the thing. There's something happening right now that WooCommerce store owners need to hear immediately. Max: Today, not later, right now. Rachel: The Hacker News and Gbhackers both reported on a critical vulnerability in the Funnel Builder plugin by FunnelKit. It's being actively exploited in the wild right now. Max: I mean, we're talking 40,000 plus WooCommerce storefronts exposed here. Here, Sansec threat researchers confirmed attackers are injecting malicious JavaScript on checkout pages. Rachel: The scary part, it's disguised as a regular marketing tool. Max: Wow. Rachel: Customers are typing in their card details and the skimmer silently grabs everything. That's wild, right? Max: Silent is the word. Nobody sees it happening. Rachel: Right. So here's the thing. The fix is straightforward. Update FunnelKit to version 3.15.03 or higher. Or higher. Do it before you do anything else today. No joke. Max: And look, if you manage WooCommerce stores for clients, check every single one, not just your own. Rachel: Every single one. Don't assume someone else already did it, you know? Max: You know what gets me about this? We spend all week talking about AI making checkouts smarter, faster, more personalized and then something like this hits and reminds you that checkout is also the most targeted, most vulnerable spot in your entire store. 4. Rachel: It's where the money moves, of course, is the target. Come on. Max: Which brings up the checkout friction piece, too, you know? Because it's all connected. Visa's checkout friction report found that 76% of shoppers have abandoned an online purchase. 76! Rachel: Wait, three out of four people? That's wild. Max: Three out of four people! And 47% say re-entering card details across different sites is a top frustration. So you've got friction killing conversions on one side. And now active skimmers stealing data on the other. Rachel: Checkouts getting attacked from both directions- here's the thing. Max: Exactly; and I found this breakdown from Melanie Hearse at Smart Company really solid work: on the three things that cause drop off: too many steps, too much information asked up front, having to re enter details you've already given somewhere else. Rachel: Albert Naffah from Commonwealth Bank said the same thing in that piece: the bar for abandonment is low. Oh, one extra field and people are out, you know what I mean? Max: One field, one extra field and merchants are still building checkouts with six steps. Rachel: I mean, come on, six steps? Come on. Max: Right? And get this, the Visa data out of Jordan actually showed 57% of consumers would shop online more often if checkout were simpler, more often. That's a massive opportunity sitting there. Rachel: So the takeaway for this week is pretty clear. It's pretty clear, right? Patch FunnelKit right now if it applies to you, and then step back and actually look at your checkout flow like a customer would. Really look at it. Max: Here's what you need to do. Ask yourself honestly how many steps does it actually take? Are you asking for information you don't even need at that moment? Rachel: Because the future everyone's excited about, the AI agents, the agentic commerce, the 30-minute delivery, all of it still runs through checkout. That's where it either converts or doesn't. Doesn't. That's the real deal. Max: I mean, if your checkout is broken or compromised, none of the rest matters. Rachel: Secure it first; simplify it second. Then go build the cool stuff. That's the playbook. Max: That's the priority stack right there. Rachel: Pretty much sums up the whole week, honestly. You know what I mean? Okay, that's a wrap on another week at the Checkout Point. Max: Ooh, good one today, Max. That point you made about Amazon's 30-Minute Delivery setting expectations, that really stuck with me. Once people get used to that speed, you can't put that genie back in the bottle. Rachel: Right? And then Rachel flipped it around with the merchant visibility angle. If the AI picks the winner, everyone else is just invisible, you know? That stuck with me. Max: That's honestly the thread I keep coming back. to all episode. Whoever controls the moment between customer and purchase, that's who controls the transaction, and AI is reshaping that conversation from every single direction. Rachel: Whether it's Amazon, TikTok agents running your ad campaigns, or 90% of B2B buying going autonomous by 2028, Max: Wow! Rachel: that's wild, right? The pace is just a lot. Max: Oh, and seriously? Patch your WooCommerce plugins today. A. Not tomorrow. Don't be the store finding out the hard way. Rachel: Yeah, serious note there. All right, here's the thing. If you got something out of today's episode, do us a favor and subscribe, leave a review. It genuinely helps the show grow. Max: We really do appreciate you spending time with us each week. Keep it real out there and stay sharp. Rachel: See you next time.