Free Agents 🤖⛓️‍💥

👀 TLDR

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover Google’s Agent Payments Protocol, a new open standard that will allow AI agents to truly work autonomously to buy things on our behalf. Google has signed up a host of big names, from PayPal to Mastercard, Coinbase to Salesforce, to facilitate the protocol, so it could transform the web as we know it. We also have news on OpenAI jumping into robotics, a deal for TikTok is finally here (we hope), how AI is picking world leaders, and more!

🔥 Vibe & Validate with 3A: Workshop, Prototype and Roadmap in ONE Week 🔥

🎬 Our Top Take

📱📵 Google – Agentic Economy Is Unleashed with AI Payments Protocol

With all the talk of AI agents across 2025, there has always been one barrier to true autonomy – payments. Today, an AI agent can book a flight based on your instructions, but within a single platform, i.e., you could ask Expedia’s Romie to search and book a flight inside the Expedia app. However, Google just blew everything wide open, announcing the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), a new open standard that will allow, at least eventually, AI agents to freely roam the internet and buy things on your behalf. Partnering with Google is a who’s who of finance and eCommerce: Mastercard, Coinbase, Amex, PayPal, Salesforce, and many others. It works like this: Say you ask the AI agent to “buy Giants-Packers tickets the moment they go on sale; don’t pay more than $200.” This direct command creates an “Intent Mandate,” allowing the agent to create a “Cart Mandate,” basically authorizing it to go get those NFL tickets. Those mandates aren’t just technical terms; they are contracts between you and the agent, and they are recorded on a cryptographical evidence trail. The protocol is open-source and is interoperable across different AI platforms, so while this is a Google announcement on paper, it’s about the wider AI industry. It’s also payment agnostic, using credit & debit cards, crypto stablecoins, and even bank transfers. The news is just a few hours old, and we would invite you to read Google’s explainer here (they’ve actually done a good job for the layman), but it’s plain to see that this is a significant step in facilitating the growth of the true agentic web. #AIPays Read more here.

📲 App of the Week: Messages

Ah yes, Apple Messages – hardly a new app to showcase for our App of the Week. Yet, there’s method to our madness with this pick. iOS 26 has just been released, marking one of the biggest transformations to Apple’s operating systems ever, at least stylistically. Anyhow, Messages has arguably been the biggest beneficiary, getting new features, some mundane like polls, and others head-turning, like Live Translate. The last is generating a lot of buzz from tech publications mere hours after its release, with Tech Radar claiming it could be the best AI feature on iOS to date. There’s also more control over your Messages inbox, allowing for message filtering to keep spammers out, Drafts view, Apple Cash integration with 1 tap in Groups, and a lot more.

🧐 Stat of the Week: 30%

📈📉 Apps – The Highlights from RevenueCat’s 2025 Subscriptions Report

We have reviewed RevenueCat’s annual report on app subscription performance, and it makes for some interesting reading. One of the main headlines was how AI “apps print money,” matched only by health and fitness apps across the sector, although there was a warning that your AI app must offer quality. There was also a trend in how apps look beyond subscriptions, with over one-third now generating revenue from one-off sales. But the most intriguing takeaway from the report focused on user retention. Nearly 30% of annual subscriptions are canceled within the first month, and if they don’t rejoin within a year, they are unlikely to return. The best way to retain? Low prices: 36% of users stick around when there’s a cheap annual plan, compared to just 6.7% with higher-priced monthly plans. #AppyPays View the full report here.

🗞️ Other Stories

📍 Meanwhile at 3Advance

A year ago this week, The Craic newsletter made its debut in a just handful of email inboxes. Since then, our (at times, very) light-hearted weekly digest of all things Irish has grown considerably. While it’s a little more laid-back than What’s Appening, we’ve learned plenty of lessons from this newsletter that made The Craic hit all the right notes right out of the gate; you might even notice a few similarities. 😉 Its primary purpose is to engage the Irish (and non-Irish) at home and abroad, helping shine a light on the upcoming Shift app. The Shift platform is being created by the Digital Product Studio here at 3Advance, with Paul and Darren taking a stake in what’s primed to be the greatest Irish thing since sliced (Brennan’s) Bread. If you’re Irish, or Irish-ish, check it out, and sign up for the newsletter and the Shift app here.