The Browser Wars Are Back, and is LinkedIn becoming the ‘Professional’s Wallet’?
Plus: The Battle For Digital Intent, and Google's move to win agent payments
Hi everyone, thanks for coming back to Customer Futures.
Each week I unpack the disruptive shifts around digital wallets, Personal AI and digital customer relationships.
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Customer Futures is on tour: Three weeks, three international cities, three meet-ups…
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Hi folks,
So. Much. Happening.
Presumably, you’ll have seen the latest AI-generated videos from DeepMind’s Veo 3. I mean things like this, this, this, this and this.
If not, I suggest you take five minutes and go watch them now. Because we just crossed a line. And the results are wild.
Yes, they are visually stunning and technically impressive, but frankly, they’re unsettling. We’ve officially passed that point where, for short clips at least, it’s hard to trust your own eyes and ears.
We’re not looking at clumsy and obvious fakes anymore, with people with six fingers and a hole in the face. Nope, it’s now hyper-realistic videos and audio with human traits. Even showing human feelings.
Back in March 2023, I predicted we’d hit this moment within two years. It’s taken only two months longer than that.
And so the question becomes: what do we do about it? The answer is both simple and urgent.
We must start digitally signing everything.
That means every message, every video, every stream, every image and every post. If we want to retain any sense of digital trust - not just in our feeds and chats, but in digital commerce and frankly all our communications - we’re going to need new layers of verification.
Sure, right now it’s mostly silly videos, uncanny audio deepfakes, and prank content.
But it won’t stop there. In fact, it’s already bleeding into:
Fake product reviews that shift buying decisions
AI-generated political ads designed to manipulate sentiment
Synthetic CEO voice clips used in fraud
Deepfaked influencer content driving ‘views’ and ad revenue
AI video clones starring in livestreams that rake in real money
To fix it, we are going to need new digital infrastructure.
New digital tools that can support billions of signatures, credentials and attestations, and all in real time. Not just for governments and businesses, but for individuals,. For creators, communities, and even AI agents themselves.
From what I can see, the heart of that new layer will need to include digital wallets.
I don’t mean for holding crypto assets or NFTs, but instead for holding identity credentials, cryptographic keys, and the ability to sign and verify messages and content.
Yes, there will be messiness to sort. Biometric binding, key recovery, trust frameworks, and disputes over what counts as “verified.”
But without simple, secure, and decentralised ways to prove what’s real and what’s not, we will lose our digital bearings. And quickly.
More specifically, what we need are Digital ID Wallets. Smart, privacy-preserving apps that allow us to sign and verify messages, prove interactions, and hold credentials across every digital context.
Helpfully, quite a few governments and big tech companies are already rolling out these ID wallets, which are intended to hold verifiable credentials for everything from travel documents to government services.
And then there’s the EU Digital Identity Wallet, soon to be offered to over 400 million citizens. And it’s already being designed to support digital signing.
But what all these organisations haven’t yet realised is that these wallets won’t just be useful for accessing services or proving your age.
They’ll soon be essential infrastructure for rebuilding trust in digital content, digital conversations, and digital commerce.
For a new digital age where all content becomes digitally guilty until proven innocent.
Unless we act now - to build, adopt, and standardise digital verification tools that serve people, not just platforms - we risk sliding into a future where trust becomes impossible, and every click becomes a coin toss.
Yes, we just crossed a line. But we now have the tools to handle this very real collapse of digital trust.
We know the stakes. We now just need the will.
It’s just one more opportunity to unpack what it all means for the future of being a digital customer. So welcome back to the Customer Futures newsletter.
In this week’s edition:
The Battle for Digital Intent
Collario - are you ready for the future?
Google's move to win agent payments
The browser wars are back
The professional’s digital wallet might just be LinkedIn - and it’ll start with Reusable ID
… and much more
So grab a brew, and Let’s Go.
The Battle for Digital Intent
Let’s rewind to 1994.
You’re in a cafe, and someone’s showing you a web browser. It’s exciting. The future of e-magazines, chat rooms, online shopping and digital storefronts is becoming clear. But it’s also confusing.
No standards. No trust. No real idea how commerce will work in “cyberspace.” Back then, it felt like a revolution. And it was. But it was also a mess.
Sound familiar? Because here we are again, this time with AI Agents. And this time, the stakes are higher, and it’s moving 10x faster.
Back then, the web was built on open standards, all peer-to-peer. It was decentralised. But for the last 30 years, it’s been warped into a series of narrow entry points, owned and controlled by large businesses.
Dominated layer by layer, interface by interface, chat by chat.
Big Tech now owns the channels, the recommendation engines and the digital shelves. But most importantly, they own access to customer intent. The golden egg of the digital economy.
But AI Agents have the potential to flip the model.
As Stuart Winter-Tear puts it:
“Agents aren’t just new interfaces. They’re new gatekeepers… poised to displace superplatforms at the most valuable junction of the digital economy: user intent.
“Whoever controls the entry point to intent controls the economics of relevance, ranking, and revenue. That isn’t just a UX upgrade, it’s a redistribution of power.”
So who will control these new Agents? That’s the trillion-dollar question.
Because if Big Tech ends up controlling the platforms that run our Agents too, we haven’t changed the game at all. We’ve just changed the interface.
Stuart reminds us that AI Agents are going to be pretty disruptive to the incumbent tech platforms:
Skewed attention: Agents will optimise for outcomes, not engagement metrics
Blocked data: Agents will shield and filter behavioural signals
Preferred commerce: Agents will reroute traffic instead of driving it to owned platforms
And how will brands respond? They’ll be threatened too, for many of the same reasons. It’s likely we’ll see:
Adversarial UI tactics to confuse or disrupt agents
API gatekeeping and usage fees
Narrative control to frame Agents as unsafe or unreliable
But look again: we’ve seen those moves before. They’re from the same playbook that businesses use to ‘defend’ themselves against the empowered customer. Used against privacy tools like ad blockers, and data portability efforts like open banking.
Here’s the issue. If businesses fight to control AI Agents, we’ll end up with a false choice between:
Agents getting dominated by today’s superplatforms - it’ll warp our digital experiences
Agents getting undermined by the brands - it’ll degrade our digital experiences
Either way, it’s not ideal.
But there’s a third option. Another way.
Because a new breed of tech is emerging on the customer side. Built for individuals, not businesses. Accountable to the person, not the brand’s KPIs that happen to matter this quarter.
It’s Empowerment Tech.
Of course, there’s always been a battle for consumer intent. But with AI Agents, now it’s a war.
And the customer - and her Personal AI - is on the front line.
Collario - are you ready for the future?
“Collario is the world’s first AI-powered smart accessory. It combines fashion, function, and full-time guidance.
“It’s equipped with dual cameras, a microphone, LED indicator, speakers, and a self-adjusting fit system, Collario watches your surroundings, listens, and speaks back through a built-in assistant. It’s always on, always with you - making decisions easier, safer, and smarter.
“Think AirPods-meets-guardian-angel, with mass market potential across lifestyle, wellness, and security.
“The founders are raising a seed round at a $2B valuation to launch the future of autonomous personal guidance.
“Collario: Don’t just wear tech. Let it lead.”
OK, how far did you get before realising?
I assumed it was a massive parody. Brilliantly riffing on the media circus surrounding the new bromance between Jony Ive and Sam Altman.
But the guy that came up with Collario - Yaroslav Ktavtsov, an artist in Serbia - wasn’t joking. And he’s not looking for investment to build it.
Instead, he’s trying to make a point about high tech, devices, AI and personalisation. Using contemporary art, and stirring our emotions.
Well, it worked. And wow, it’s worth looking through the comments of his post.
But how did it make you feel?
Me too.
Google's Move To Win Agent Payments
Google AI just announced ‘Shop with AI’ mode. And everyone got excited about the massive disruption to the checkout flow.
But most people missed the main reason Google might just win this agent payments thing.
Here’s why:
Google AI users can now shop and checkout without needing to visit a retailer’s website. That’s a big deal. And it’s noteworthy that Shopify’s shareprice dropped 5% right after it was announced.
Because Google just collapsed the entire online commerce funnel. From intent to purchase.
But look again at the bigger picture. Google also has:
Google Wallet - the interface and storage for verifiable payments and transactions
Digital ID - back by government documents
Verifiable data - the ability to add all sorts of other credentials to the wallet, from tickets and licenses to entitlements and job info
Now that is a killer combination. Because the wallet and rich identity data will make Google’s AI agents even more powerful.
But pause. Look at what else Google has.
Access to a lot of other data.
By which I mean:
Gmail - which, let’s be honest, is where all the customer relationship stuff is - pdfs of warranties, receipts, boarding passes and password reset pathways. Yes, Meta can use WhatsApp to help with a customer chat, but your email address is the long pole in the tent of customer contact and document storage
Flights, hotels, travel, insurance - and many other data sets and APIs… i.e. killer access to vertical markets
Maps - the mother of all context… where you are, where you need to get to, where to deliver stuff, where the businesses you want to visit are
Now, Apple’s strength is the OS, hardware, and payment integration with merchants. And they have the privacy marketing which Google can’t get anywhere near due to the advertising business.
But Google’s positioning here with Wallet, ID, credentials, email, vertical datasets and maps will be hard to beat when it comes to shopping with AI agents.
Google has been on rocky ground so far with Gemini. Lots of complaints about accuracy and value.
But ‘Shop with AI’ might just be a master stroke to win agent payments.
The Browser Wars Are Back
Renowned investment firm a16z has just declared that “The browser wars are back!”
“The world where any consumer or business can deploy an agent to make purchases on their behalf is not far away.
“The networks (Visa, Mastercard), PSPs (Stripe, PayPal) etc. are all racing to secure their place in the agentic commerce future.
“But the browser is perhaps best positioned to act as verifier & communication bridge between human, AI agent, and merchant - and even as a launch pad for agentic experiences.”
This last point - about the communication bridge - is key.
Yes, voice will become a big part of the new digital interface. But humans are visual creatures. We like to see and interact with route maps, images, visuals and videos. Not just bark orders at our digital assistants.
But here’s the thing. Visual interfaces aren’t just about control. They are also about trust.
Because visuals are another form of ‘Good Friction’. They give us reassurance. Just ask anyone with an Alexa in their home.
And frankly, it’s time for some disruption with the browser, which hasn’t changed that much in 20 years, other than enabling new digital silos and SaaS products.
Remember, they were originally for ‘surfing’ the ‘information super-highway’. It was a place to go. But now, browsers are often just clunky interaction booths. Where we awkwardly shuffle from form to form, from site to site.
Honestly, it doesn’t feel like browsing any more. It feels more like digging.
All those forms and clicks and scrolls giving us repetitive strain injuries. Like working on a farm in the 1800s, breaking our backs and turning over the earth with forks.
But when you add Empowerment Tech into the experience - meaning AI agents, digital wallets and data stores - the browser becomes something very different.
First of all, rather than manually loading all our personal data from place to place, our identities can be seamlessly weaved into the places we already are.
We can prove anything about ourselves instantly, and to anyone.
Today, Fintech players talks about embedded finance. Seamlessly adding payments into an experience. But when we add Empowerment Tech to the browser, you can see the potential for ‘embedded identity’.
And it won’t feel like digging. Or browsing.
It will feel more like swimming.
With digital experiences and information flowing much more naturally around us. Under our control. Transparently and quietly helping us manage who we’re interacting with, and how.
And where AI Agents support, not displace, our interactions.
If we get it right, and our data becomes more portable, private and permissioned, the browser - and our embedded identity and agent assistants - will be transformational.
I think a16z are right about the browser wars. But not just because we can add AI agents.
But because we’ll be able to add EmpowermentTech, embedded identity, credentials and more, much more broadly.
And we’ll shift from browsing to swimming.
Maybe it won’t be a war. It’ll be about deciding which pool to get in.
The professional’s digital wallet might just be LinkedIn - and it’ll start with Reusable ID
This is potentially a big deal. If you ‘Get Verified’ on LinkedIn, you can now start reusing that Verified ID on other platforms.
It’s ’Reusable ID’ in practice, and soon, at scale.
With LinkedIn (and their owner Microsoft) muscle, you can imaging this being useful in lots of places. And that’s before you join the dots with - and make this ID useful across - employee verification (proving you work for a certain company).
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. LinkedIn is the dark horse when it comes to “The Professional’s Wallet”.
Why?
Because if we start with digital ID, then I can soon make portable
Proof of role
Proof of employer
Proof of qualifications
Now switch on Microsoft Entra, their digital credentials platform, to all their existing enterprise clients. And make all those ‘work credentials’ acceptable across all sorts of existing business processes.
Where LinkedIn becomes the wallet, and Microsoft’s clients become the ‘acceptance network’.
Voila. Digital verifiable credentials at scale, embedded into the employee workflow.
They are positioning this whole announcement around ‘digital trust’. Quite right. But the bigger goal? Putting the LinkedIn Digital Wallet at the centre of the employer’s credential ecosystem.
How long until you can use LinkedIn for single sign-on, going through an application process, or verfiying all your training?
OTHER THINGS
There are far too many interesting and important Customer Futures things to include this week.
So here are some more links to chew on:
News: Targeted digital advertising via ‘real time bidding’ (RTB) is now officially - and legally - the world’s largest data breach READ
Article: Infosec guru Bruce Schneier worries Corporate AI will manipulate us READ
News: Worldcoin (now ‘World’) raises $135M from Andreessen Horowitz and Bain Capital Crypto READ
Idea: Digital Wallets and Digital Identity are converging READ
News: Massive data breach exposes 184 million passwords for Google, Microsoft and Facebook READ
And that’s a wrap. Stay tuned for more Customer Futures soon, both here and over at LinkedIn.
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I have desire to use an agent to negotiate on my behalf where's it's primary alliance is to micropayments to the sales channel process and to vendors who heavily advertise on the agent's platform of choice.
Signing of content cannot just be for those with the latest digital wallet on their latest premium smartphone.