HM Treasury laid a draft instrument taking UK stablecoin payments out of the cryptoasset dealing rules, and PYMNTS puts merchants with agent-readable product data at 15%

HM Treasury laid a draft statutory instrument on 15 September 2026 that pulls UK qualifying stablecoins out of three regulated activities at once: dealing in qualifying cryptoassets as principal, dealing as agent, and arranging deals in qualifying cryptoassets [1] [2] [3]. It is called the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Cryptoassets) (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2026, and the framework it amends is the Cryptoassets Regulations 2026, S.I. 2026/102 [2].

The explanatory memorandum gives the reason. Without the change, payment activities involving a UK qualifying stablecoin would likely sit inside the cryptoasset dealing and intermediary activities, with stablecoin payment firms carrying “overlapping or disproportionate regulatory requirements ahead of the wider payments reforms coming into force” [2]. HM Treasury consulted in July 2026 on bringing certain stablecoins into the payments perimeter instead [2], so the exclusion holds until the payments regime catches up.

Lending and borrowing stay in. The Government keeps those activities inside the perimeter because of the risk it says they present to consumers and other users, and carves out one exception: institutional collateral and repurchase agreement arrangements come out of the dealing and arranging activities for all qualifying stablecoins, UK-issued or overseas, where the original holder is not a consumer or a person specified by Financial Conduct Authority rules [2]. Norton Rose Fulbright read it the same way on 16 September 2026: transferring a UK qualifying stablecoin or exchanging it for another asset falls outside, except for lending and borrowing arrangements and exchanges for cryptoassets that are not UK qualifying stablecoins [3].

Holding a UK qualifying stablecoin temporarily in connection with a payment transaction also comes out of the cryptoasset safeguarding activity, and backing asset arrangements for those stablecoins come out of the relevant safeguarding activities [2]. The instrument then writes a new controlled activity into the Financial Promotion Order, issuing qualifying stablecoin, and a new controlled investment to go with it [2]. The draft is not law yet. It needs parliamentary approval, and the memorandum dates the cryptoassets regime coming fully into force to 25 October 2027 [2]. Anyone treating it as relief today is planning against a document that has not been made.

Fifteen per cent of merchants have product data an agent can read

PYMNTS Intelligence published “Will the 2026 Shopping Season Go Agentic?” in September 2026, drawing on consumer, merchant and acquirer research run between September 2025 and August 2026, with a latest wave of 2,061 US consumers and 60 US retail merchants [6]. Sixty merchants is a small room, and every merchant figure in that report rests on it. PYMNTS puts nearly 132 million US adults as having bought a retail product with AI’s help, and 59% of AI-assisted purchases as still ending at Amazon [5], figures Forkast News carried on 15 September 2026 [7].

The readiness figure comes off a larger sample. In PYMNTS’s Global Digital Shopping Index: The Agentic Commerce Deep Dive, published on 8 September 2026 across 1,185 merchants, 5,241 consumers and 150 acquirers in the United States, Brazil and the United Arab Emirates, “just 15% have structured product data an agent can read” [8]. The Merchant Edition of the same index, commissioned by Visa Acceptance Solutions, reported on 2 September 2026 that 23% of merchants can clearly identify both AI-driven traffic and the purchases that follow, and that 21% can see the traffic and cannot join it to a completed purchase [9]. By size it is 27% of large merchants against 19% of small and medium businesses [9]. A product feed an agent cannot parse throws no error and pages nobody. The merchant finds out at the end of the quarter, if at all.

One investment, and no number attached to it

Azoma, which sells what it calls agentic commerce optimisation, said on 18 September 2026 that it had taken investment from dunnhumby ventures, and that Leo Nagdas, head of dunnhumby ventures, had joined as a board advisor [4]. Max Sinclair, the company’s chief executive and co-founder, is quoted in the release [4]. The release carries no amount, and no independent outlet has reported one, so the size of the round is unknown rather than small.

Nothing else in agentic commerce moved between 18 and 20 September 2026 that carried a number worth printing.