Anthropic unveiled a blueprint to support building commerce agents based on Claude. It said retailers, marketplaces, e-commerce platforms and travel companies worldwide are creating shopping agents with Claude, and customers such as Shopify and Priceline have already launched agents for natural-language search, comparison and purchasing. The blueprint includes harnesses, patterns and guardrails, reference implementations, and a Claude Code plugin. It works across Claude API and major cloud environments, and includes shopping and merchant agents.

Russia will begin introducing digital rouble payments from Sept. 1 local time, but will keep prohibitions on using cryptocurrencies as a direct payment method. Major telecoms, online marketplaces and key banks are set to support the state-controlled digital currency, which becomes a third form of national money alongside cash and non-cash roubles. Laws set phased obligations for firms and banks to adopt the system, though surveys show limited consumer willingness to use it.