Morning all, Craig Mc Glashan here with the Europe Wire from the London newsroom. Shoppers are increasingly using artificial intelligence systems to look for deals and rare items – but the job of hunting the web for sought-after items could soon be taken by the AI bots themselves, research suggests. That raises questions over how the payments companies that underly such transactions will operate and compete in this new world – a topic we delve into with Matteo Stefanel of Apis Partners this morning.

We stay in the world of payments for our second item of the day. Accel-KKR-backed Basware has agreed to acquire Trustpair, pairing Basware's invoice lifecycle management platform with Trustpair's payment fraud prevention technology. Shopping list Artificial intelligence-powered shopping assistants – dubbed 'agentic shoppers' – could soon account for a big chunk of consumer spend, according to researchers.

Payments companies will need to keep up with the lightning-fast decisions these virtual assistants make – adding another layer of AI-related diligence for dealmakers in the sector, Matteo Stefanel, managing partner and co-founder at Apis Partners, told PE Hub. Agentic shoppers could represent $190 billion-$385 billion of US ecommerce spending by 2030, equating to 10-20 percent of market share, according to Morgan Stanley Research. They are a step beyond simply using AI to find products.

Instead, they scour the web for items based on their owners' preferences, looking for deals and negotiating sales with minimal user intervention. That goes beyond relatively inconsequential items like clothes. The technology could eventually apply to areas like selecting 401k investments, for instance.

Founded in 2014, Apis invests in financial infrastructure from offices in London, Dubai and Singapore. In May, it announced a $175 million investment in Paymentology, a global issuing and payments processing platform for banks and fintechs, alongside Aspirity Partners.