The AI Wars Move Beyond the Screen—Into Your Wallet

The technology industry has spent the better part of two decades obsessing over mobile-first strategy. But as artificial intelligence becomes the organizing principle of consumer computing, the real competition among OpenAI, Amazon, and Apple is shifting from controlling the handset to controlling the financial transaction that happens on it. The smartis no longer the destination. The wallet is. This represents a fundamental realignment of power in fintech. For the past fifteen years, platform operators have treated payments as a feature of the device.