BUSINESS

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A J.P. Morgan analyst recommends Meta’s stock following signs of progress on consumer-focused AI applications.

Oil prices were at their highest levels since late May, while rising wholesale inflation data sent benchmark 10-year yields closer to the key 5% level.

Every portfolio has one holding that is supposed to be the adult in the room.

It is the position you buy so you can stop checking your phone when stocks wobble. It does not pay you anything, and that is fine, because you did not buy it for income. You bought it for sleep.

Precious metals have played that part for generations, and the math behind them is simpler than most people assume.

An ounce of silver pays no dividend and no interest. So its price is really a running argument between two things, how frightened investors are, and how much money they can earn by sitting in cash instead.

When rates fall and fear rises, that argument breaks in silver’s favor. When rates climb and the panic fades, cash starts winning it.

For most of the past two years, the argument was not close. Silver rose more than 130% in 2025, then peaked at $121.67 an ounce on Jan. 29, 2026, according to APMEX. Solar manufacturers wanted it, electric vehicle makers wanted it, and investors who had watched gold run wanted the cheaper version of the same trade.

Then the rate picture flipped, and JPMorgan (JPM) quietly reset what the next two years are supposed to look like.

Why silver falls harder than gold when the mood turns

Silver leads a double life, and that is the whole story of its volatility.

Roughly half of annual demand is industrial. It goes into solar panels, electronics, and vehicles, which means silver takes the hit whenever factories slow down or engineers find a way to use less of it.

More Gold & Silver: 

Gold, silver rally off ugly crash, but investors remain on edge

Citi doubles down on silver after pullback

JPMorgan sees the writing on the wall for silver stock investors

The other half is investment demand, where silver trades as gold’s high-beta cousin. The market is smaller and thinner than gold’s, so the same dollar of buying or selling moves it much further.

That is why the metal amplifies gold in both directions. It is also why silver investors keep getting whipsawed while gold holders sit relatively still.

The measure that captures this is the gold-to-silver ratio, which counts how many ounces of silver it takes to buy one ounce of gold. A falling ratio means silver is outrunning gold. A rising one means the opposite.

That ratio dropped below 45 in late January, its most silver-friendly reading in years, and has since climbed back to roughly 70, according to J.P. Morgan Global Research.

JPMorgan cut its 2027 silver forecast by 26% in a revision published in August.Olivier Le Moal / Getty Images

What JPMorgan’s revised silver price forecast actually says

The bank’s commodities desk published a revision in August that cut its silver outlook across every remaining quarter, and the deepest cuts land in 2027 rather than this year.

Here is the revision in full, and the number that matters is not the one for this year.

The 2026 average forecast fell to $70.60 an ounce from $84.30, a 16% cut, according to J.P. Morgan Global Research. 

The 2027 average forecast fell to $63.90 an ounce from $85.80, a 26% cut, based on the same J.P. Morgan research note. 

The strongest quarter anywhere in the two-year outlook is the fourth quarter of 2027, at $65 an ounce, J.P. Morgan Global Research noted.

Spot silver traded at about $65.87 an ounce late on Sept. 8, according to Kitco. 

Silver is down 7.65% since the start of the year, despite being up roughly 59% from a year ago, Forbes Advisor reported. 

Read those first four bullets together and the problem becomes obvious.

When I lined up the bank’s 2027 quarterly path against silver’s Sept. 8 level, every single quarter came in at or below where the metal already trades. The bank’s most optimistic quarter, 18 months out, is roughly where the metal sat in early September.

That is not a price target in the way investors normally use the phrase. A target usually implies somewhere to go. This one implies the trip is finished.

The bank had already trimmed its near-term view over the summer, when it moved to a $60 to $65 range for the rest of 2026. What changed in August is the back half of the horizon, which had still been carrying a high-$80s handle.

The split with rivals is now wide enough to matter. HSBC went the other direction in May and raised its 2027 silver average to $68 an ounce, leaving the two banks about four dollars apart on the same metal in the same year.

How a Fed rate hike rewrites the case for owning silver

The reason for the cut is the part most silver coverage still has backwards.

For two years the bull case rested on rate cuts arriving. Cheaper money weakens the dollar, lowers the return on cash, and makes a metal that yields nothing look reasonable by comparison.

Related: Pandora opens unexpected box as silver price drops

That assumption is now inverted. The Federal Reserve has held its target range at 3.50% to 3.75% since its July 28 to 29 meeting, and CME FedWatch data showed a 66% probability of a quarter-point increase at the Sept. 16 meeting as of Aug. 31, according to Forbes.

Higher rates “increase the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding assets like silver,” said Gregory Shearer, head of base and precious metals strategy at J.P. Morgan.

Gold has a defense here that silver does not. Central banks keep buying gold as a reserve asset regardless of what the Fed does, and that structural bid cushions the drops.

Nobody is stockpiling silver for their national reserves. It has to earn its price from factories and speculators, and both are pulling back at once.

On the factory side, silver-thrifting technology is spreading through solar manufacturing, and Chinese buyers front-loaded imports ahead of a photovoltaic export tax change on April 1. Solar demand for silver could fall about 30% this year, a reduction near 60 million ounces, Shearer said.

What the silver forecast means for your money right now

Here is the part that actually reaches your account statement.

If you bought silver anywhere near the January high, JPMorgan’s own 2027 forecast leaves you down roughly 47% two years later. That is not a drawdown you wait out over a quarter. That is a multi-year hold with no recovery penciled in by the bank itself.

If you bought before 2025, you are still comfortably ahead, and the real question is whether you are holding a winner or refusing to book one.

And if you own no silver and were waiting for a dip, my read of the forecast table is that the bank has removed the reason to hurry. When the most bullish quarter on a two-year sheet matches today’s screen, patience costs you almost nothing.

The wider point reaches past silver. A hiking Fed does not just hurt metals, it pays you to hold cash instead, and Treasury bills competing at these levels are the quiet rival every non-yielding asset now has to beat.

Shearer’s team flagged four things worth watching from here, and the list is shorter than the noise suggests. Watch the direction of gold, the tightness of the physical market, photovoltaic demand out of China and India, and the federal funds rate.

The last one is doing most of the work. Silver’s next chapter gets written at the Fed, not in the mines, and the September meeting is the first page.

Related: Robert Kiyosaki has a bold call on gold and silver

After bankruptcy, ongoing restaurant closures, a sweeping restructuring, and years of financial pressure, a once-iconic seafood chain continues to shutter locations as it works to stabilize its business.

The changes come as the company attempts to rebuild after a turbulent period that pushed the nearly 60-year-old restaurant chain into bankruptcy and led it to close more than 100 locations, raising questions about the future of its business and signature Cheddar Bay Biscuits.

That chain is Red Lobster.

Now, as it works to return to profitability, the company is continuing to evaluate its restaurant footprint, with additional closures possible as it focuses on its strongest markets.

Red Lobster closes dozens of restaurants in 2026

Red Lobster has closed 36 restaurants, with 484 locations still listed as of September 8, 2026, according to Technomic data reported by National Restaurant News. That represents a 7% reduction from the 520 locations the chain had at the end of 2025.

At least 20 of those closures occurred in 2026, including:

Alabama: 515 Quintard Dr. in Oxford closed in September after 35 years

1818 University Dr. NW in Huntsville closed in September.

300 Eastdale Cir. in Montgomery closed in September.

1030 Montgomery Hwy. in Vestavia Hills closed in May after 54 years.

California:72291 CA-111 in Palm Desert closed in September after 14 years.

1525 S Bradley Road in Santa Maria closed in August after 32 years.

Connecticut: 4485 Main St. in Bridgeport closed in July.

Florida: 2583 N Monroe St. in Tallahassee closed in May after 56 years.

Georgia: 1425 13th St. in Columbus closed in August after 55 years.

Illinois: 2696 S Dirksen Pkw. in Springfield closed in August.

Kansas: 9475 Metcalf Ave. in Overland Park closed in May.

2011 SW Wanamaker Rd. in Topeka closed in April.

Louisiana: 6051 Bluebonnet Blvd. in Baton Rouge closed in April.

Michigan: 4109 Wilder Rd. in Bay City closed in March.

Minnesota: 2925 White Bear Ave. in Maplewood closed in August.

Missouri: 4328 S Noland Rd. in Independence closed in May.

New York: The Times Square flagship closed in June after 23 years.

Pennsylvania: 935 Wayne Ave. in Chambersburg closed in May.

1502 Scranton Carbondale Hwy. in Dickson City closed in April after 25 years.

Texas: 8401 Gateway Blvd. W in El Paso closed in March.

The shutdowns illustrate how the chain is continuing to adjust its physical footprint even after emerging from bankruptcy.

Red Lobster continues restaurant closures in 2026.Craig T Fruchtman / Getty Images

Why Red Lobster is continuing to close locations nationwide

The closures come as Red Lobster continues recovering from a turbulent period in its history.

Red Lobster filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in May 2024 after accumulating nearly $300 million in debt and shutting down approximately 130 restaurants. Court filings cited rising operating costs, declining consumer traffic, and significant financial losses.

The company’s $20 Ultimate Endless Shrimp promotion was also identified as a major financial problem. According to court-related filings and subsequent reporting, the promotion contributed to an $11 million quarterly loss.

As part of the restructuring, Red Lobster closed about 130 restaurants before emerging from bankruptcy under new ownership by RL Investor Holdings LLC later that year.

After the company’s exit from bankruptcy, Adamolekun was appointed CEO in August 2024 and tasked with stabilizing the business and modernizing its operations following a period of leadership turnover.

Since then, Red Lobster has focused on reducing expenses, streamlining operations, renegotiating vendor agreements, and reviewing its restaurant portfolio. Additional workforce reductions and restaurant closures have remained part of the company’s restructuring efforts.

The chain’s financial troubles have also continued to generate legal fallout.

In May 2026, Red Lobster’s creditors sued former CEO Paul Kenny and Thai Union Group, the company’s former investor and seafood supplier.

According to the complaint, the defendants pushed the $20 Ultimate Endless Shrimp promotion despite knowing it could cause significant financial harm, while Thai Union benefited from increased shrimp purchases.

The complaint also claims that Kenny and Thai Union removed members of Red Lobster’s management team, blocked competing suppliers, and forced the chain to purchase larger quantities of shrimp at inflated prices.

Employees warned executives that the low price would not be profitable, but management allegedly continued expanding the promotion despite those concerns.

Red Lobster could close more restaurants in 2026

Red Lobster continues to evaluate its real estate portfolio as part of its broader turnaround strategy. That review could result in additional closures, particularly at underperforming locations, as the company focuses on strengthening its remaining restaurant base.

One important chapter in the chain’s financial history came in 2014, when private equity firm Golden Gate Capital acquired Red Lobster from Darden Restaurants (DRI) for $2.1 billion. To help finance the transaction, the company sold much of the real estate in a sale-leaseback deal valued at around $1.5 billion.

The transaction provided short-term liquidity but left Red Lobster with significant lease obligations. Those obligations became increasingly difficult to manage as the company’s traffic and financial performance weakened.

Annual lease obligations reached about $190.5 million by 2023, roughly 10% of its revenue, with more than $64 million tied to underperforming restaurants, according to the bankruptcy filing.

Red Lobster ended 2024 with approximately 528 locations. However, some leases bundle multiple restaurants, limiting the company’s flexibility to close weaker stores without affecting stronger ones.

Gad Allon, a professor of Operations, Information, and Decisions at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, has argued that the sale-leaseback illustrates the risks of prioritizing short-term financial gains over long-term reinvestment.

“Much of the liquidity from the sale-leaseback went toward paying dividends to private equity investors rather than addressing systemic operational issues or adapting the menu and brand to shifting market demands,” Allon wrote on Substack. “This misallocation of resources underscores the risks of prioritizing short-term gains over strategic reinvestment.”

Here’s some of my previous coverage of restaurant closures:

Mexican restaurant chain closes all locations in major market

Steakhouse chain closes final location in major market

Iconic Mexican restaurant shuts down after 43 years

Although Red Lobster has made progress since emerging from bankruptcy, its turnaround remains a work in progress. 

According to Technomic data, systemwide sales declined 6.2% in 2025, underscoring the ongoing challenges facing the seafood chain as it attempts to rebuild momentum.

Related: Iconic seafood chain brings back controversial deal amid closures

The Trump administration did not allow any persecuted Christians to enter as refugees to the United States during FY 2026.

In a dramatic series of announcements, Hideo Kojima claimed that Sony was on the verge of canceling his new game, PHYSINT, and he’s now left the brand for Xbox.

Wall Street just handed SpaceX a new price target, and the case behind it comes down to a single technical challenge rather than the company’s rockets, satellites and AI ambitions combined. If Elon Musk solves it, the upside case gets much bigger. If he does not, so does the risk.

The call adds another data point to a stock that has swung wildly since its record-breaking debut earlier this year, and it arrives just as investors are still digesting a mixed quarterly report that left the bull and bear cases equally intact.

Pivotal Research bets SpaceX’s future on Starship reusability

Pivotal Research initiated coverage of SpaceX on September 8, with a Buy rating and a $220 price target, which implies roughly 49% upside from the recent trading levels.

Analyst Jeffrey Wlodarczak framed the entire investment case around one variable. He wrote that SpaceX’s roughly $2 trillion valuation rests almost entirely on Starship reusability. Meaning each vehicle would need to fly 20 to 50 times with relatively cheap, fast refurbishment between launches, according to StreetInsider.

SpaceX:

Morgan Stanley doubles down on SpaceX stock for investors

SpaceX analyst plots path to bold $100 billion claim

JPMorgan resets SpaceX price target after earnings

If Musk pulls that off, Wlodarczak argues the payoff would be enormous. Cheaper, more frequent launches would allow SpaceX to deploy far more Starlink’s satellite capacity, enough to capture a meaningful share of the wireless industry. The resulting launch advantage could also position SpaceX to collect tolls from other companies trying to operate in orbit.

The downside case is just as stark. Wlodarczak wrote that if Starship reusability targets are not achieved, SpaceX becomes “a different and much smaller company.” A warning that frames the entire bull case as conditional on solving one specific engineering problem.

SpaceX shares have been on a wild ride since IPO

SpaceX priced its June IPO at $135 a share, raising $85.7 billion in the largest public offering in history, and the stock briefly touched a record high of $225.64 within its first few trading sessions before entering a sharp pullback, according to Quartz.

The ride down was just as dramatic. Shares fell to an intraday low of $104.83 on August 3, Yahoo Finance reported. A gap that came before recovering to close at $147.95 by September 4, a bounce that came even as the underlying capex concerns over the company’s enormous capital remained largely unresolved.

Wall Street’s own price targets reflect just how unsettled the debate remains. Across 37 analysts covering the stock, targets currently range from $62 to $450, while roughly three-quarters of analysts rate the stock a Buy. This underscores the bullish consensus despite the unusually wide dispersion.

Starship’s own track record shows why upper-stage reusability still remains an open question rather than a resolved fact. The vehicle has flown 13 times, with eight successful missions. Yet none of those Starship flights has been reused from a previous launch.

SpaceX’s first earnings report as a public company gave analysts plenty to debate.Anadolu / Getty Images

The numbers behind Wall Street’s capex worries

SpaceX’s first earnings report as a public company gave analysts plenty to debate. Second-quarter capital expenditures hit $18.4 billion, far above what Wall Street had expected for capex, with $15.83 billion of that spending directed toward AI infrastructure alone, a figure that immediately overshadowed an otherwise solid revenue beat.

Bank of America stayed bullish despite the sticker shock. Analyst Ronald Epstein reiterated a Buy rating and $235 price target after raising the firm’s 2026 capex forecast to $67.3 billion from $48.2 billion, arguing SpaceX’s AI investments were reaching cash breakeven in under a year, according to TheStreet.

JPMorgan reached a similar conclusion from a different angle. Analyst Doug Anmuth raised his price target to $240 even while projecting capex could approach $200 billion in both 2027 and 2028, putting further pressure on free cash flow and extending the timeline to meaningful profitability. Meanwhile, Musk had moved his own $1 trillion annual revenue target up to 2030 from 2031, TheStreet reported.

Not every firm shared that optimism. Wells Fargo cut its target to $215 from $230 over AI spending concerns, and Piper Sandler lowered its target further to $140. Arguing that valuation worries and the potential for a sharp increase in the tradable share count as SpaceX’s looming share lockup expiration.

What it means for SpaceX investors

The lockup calendar adds another layer of pressure investors need to track. More than 300 million additional SpaceX shares are scheduled to become eligible for sale on September 9, with a second tranche of similar size scheduled later on September 24.

This creates the potential for additional selling pressure regardless of how the reusability story develops.

For investors, Wlodarczak’s framing cuts through a lot of the noise around SpaceX’s other businesses. Debates over xAI, the Colossus data center project, and Starlink pricing all matter less than whether Starship achieves true reusability, since that single outcome determines which version of SpaceX actually shows up in the years ahead.

The options market’s positioning suggests that professional investors are not panicking despite the stock’s volatility. A signal that tends to matter more than headline price swings alone.

That measured reaction, paired with a price target range spanning hundreds of dollars, is a reminder that SpaceX remains a genuine binary bet dressed up as a diversified space and AI company. And treating it otherwise risks missing what actually determines the stock’s next major move.

Related: Elon Musk drops stunning SpaceX forecast

Costco uses a different rule book than other retailers.

It doesn’t have to be the flashiest, look the fanciest, or sit on the cutting edge of technology. The warehouse club simply needs to keep its members happy.

“Costco’s membership fees contributed some 72% to its operating income last year,” according to Retail Dive.

It’s a business model where success is measured by holding on to members, which the retailer has done very well.

“In the third quarter, the warehouse club reported membership fee income of $1.373 billion, an increase of $133 million or 10.7% year over year. Adjusting for FX, the increase was 9.9%, according to CFO Gary Millerchip, speaking during the company’s third-quarter earnings call.

Costco’s monthly sales aren’t the only barometer of success because membership retention is central to the business model. Still, growing sales show that members are actually using their memberships, and that has actually changed in a meaningful way.

The warehouse club, which does not spend the billions that rivals such as Amazon and Walmart invest in digital sales, has still managed to show massive growth in that area.

Costco’s sales numbers show digital growth

Costco Wholesale Corporation reported net sales of $23.7 billion for the month of August, the four weeks ended Aug. 30, 2026, an increase of 9.9% from $21.56 billion last year.

For the 16-week fourth quarter, Costco reported net sales of $93.9 billion, up 11.3% from $84.4 billion last year. And for the 52-week fiscal year ended Aug. 30, 2026, the warehouse club reported net sales of $297.3 billion, an increase of 10.2% from $269.9 billion last year.

More Costco:

Costco keeps discontinuing popular products

Discontinued Costco member favorite returns to shelves

Costco’s new service beats Amazon at its own game

That, however, wasn’t the most exciting number for the warehouse club.

Costco also reported digital sales growth of 17.9% for August, 19.8% in the fourth quarter, and 20.7% for the full year.

Those numbers show that Costco’s efforts to grow its digital business through clever partnerships, like its deal with Instacart and the recently shuttered Costco Next third-party marketplace, drove sales.

Costco may not be taking sales from Amazon and Walmart, but the strong renewal numbers suggest Costco’s digital shortcomings haven’t become a meaningful reason for members to leave.

That’s backed by its member retention rates.

“In terms of renewal rates, at Q3 end, our US and Canada renewal rate was 92.2%. Up 10 basis points from last quarter. And the worldwide rate came in at 89.7%, unchanged from last quarter,” CFO Gary Millerchip said during the company’s third-quarter earnings call.

Costco has grown its digital sales.Shutterstock

Costco has focused on smart tech investment

When Ron Vachris took over as Costco’s CEO in January of 2024, he made digital sales a priority, but he was not looking to duplicate the infrastructure required by Amazon and Walmart. Instead, he tried to leverage what the company was already doing.

“Our biggest strength on digital e-com is, of course, the merchandise and the value that we have. I mean that’s what works for us in our brick-and-mortar,” he said during the chain’s third-quarter 2024 earnings call.

He believed the chain could grow digital sales by focusing on the basics.

“A lot of the work that’s being done right now is very foundational. So better fulfillment, quicker delivery times, the reliability of the site, those types of things,” he added. “And then following that will come iterative changes of forward-facing improvements that you’ll see in the sites and move forward.”

It was a simple, cash-light strategy that, based on the recent numbers, has worked in driving significant increases in digital sales.

Vachris, during the Q3 call, talked about how its delivery business has improved.

“Average same-day delivery time in the U.S. is now less than 45 minutes, and the average member satisfaction rating is 4.8 out of 5. This part of our business is growing at an even faster rate than our digital business overall,” he said.

Costco is careful with its tech investments

RTM Nexus CEO Dominick Miserandino told TheStreet that Costco has a very simple motive with its tech investments.

“Costco isn’t digitizing for buzz. Its digital and in-store tech is translating directly to faster service and stronger member engagement,” he shared.

When Vachris assumed the CEO job, he talked about improving the company’s digital operations and GlobalData Managing Director Neil Saunders thought he had the right approach.

“I don’t see this as a radical reinvention of Costco. It’s simply that the new CEO thinks there is an opportunity to use technology better. In my view, he is correct in his assessment. Costco can improve in areas like collect from store, checking what’s in stock at the warehouse, and making the ecommerce process easier,” he wrote on RetailWire.

He noted that the chain will continue to be careful in its tech spending and not attempt to match Amazon, Walmart, or any other chain.

“This will all be selective: Costco isn’t going to offer every item for collection because some of its bulky products just don’t lend themselves to that kind of service, and most customers love visiting the warehouse. So, I’d say this is all more of a gentle technology evolution than a massive transformation,” he added.

ALSO READ: Costco’s famous return policy has a catch members don’t know

The car sitting in your driveway already does a lot of things you probably never told it to do. It checks for software updates, reports its own diagnostics, and talks to networks you never think about.

The next thing it might do is spend your money, and a growing number of companies are building the infrastructure to make that happen.

We are talking about a car that pays for its own charging session, settles a toll, or handles a parking spot without you touching your phone or approving the transaction.

The technology for most of that already works. What has been missing is the accountability layer: who authorized the car to spend, how much, and who is responsible when it does something wrong.

That’s the problem Concordium is working on. The company just got a meaningful vote of confidence from the automotive world. Per Ansgar, CEO of Geely Sweden Holdings, joined the Concordium Foundation Board.

Geely is the group behind Volvo Cars, Polestar, and several other brands. Bringing someone with that background into Concordium’s work on verified AI agents and machine-initiated payments is a clear signal that the car industry is treating this as real, The Next Web reported.

Concordium’s Agent Registry, which went live in May 2026, has already registered more than 1,600 AI agents, each linked to a verified owner.

How soon will AI-initiated, car-related transactions actually happen?

The technology is closer than most people realize, and the payments industry is starting to treat it that way. Mastercard, Visa, and the x402 Foundation have all begun working on agent identity.

Agent identity is the layer that makes it possible to know who authorized a machine to spend money and whether that authorization was still valid when the transaction cleared.

Mastercard launched its Agent Pay for Machines platform in June 2026 specifically for machine-speed transactions, Fortune reported. Companies at that scale do not build infrastructure for things they think are 20 years away.

More Automotive:

Toyota doubles down on EVs while rivals retreat

Mazda just made a big change under tariff pressure

Key auto parts maker closes factory, lays off 325 workers

“From what we’ve seen it’s already happening in pilot form, and I’d say it’s inevitable,” Varun Kabra, chief growth officer at Concordium, told TheStreet in an interview. “The barrier is not technical as cars have been interacting with networks for years.”

He makes a fair point. Cars already exchange data with external systems constantly, so adding a payment transaction to that stream is less of a leap than it looks from the outside.

The more challenging part is not making the payment happen. It is making the payment trustworthy, traceable, and tied to someone who can actually be held responsible if something goes wrong.

Writing rules for agentic AI payments is harder than building the technology

Say you set your car up to pay for charging automatically.

Seems simple enough. But does it know to avoid the most expensive station? Does it know not to charge your account during hours you have it locked? Does it know which networks you trust?

If you did not specify all of that, the car will make its own call on every one of those questions. Its version of reasonable might not match yours at all.

This is not a technology failure. It is a policy problem, and it is the one nobody has fully solved yet. An agent can execute instructions very well. But the instructions have to cover everything the agent will ever face, including situations you never imagined when you were writing the rules.

“The biggest thing to get right is how we describe the policies for what we want to happen,” Yaniv Tal, founder of Geo, a consumer network for verified knowledge, told TheStreet. “Agents are already great at carrying out tasks on our behalf — but it’s really up to us to specify what we want.”

Micropayments through agent-controlled wallets are already working in limited pilots, and the underlying architecture is sound.

But deploying it widely means writing policies that hold up in the real world, not just in the controlled environments where most of the testing has happened so far.

Cars already exchange data with external systems constantly, so adding a payment transaction to that stream is less of a leap than it looks from the outside.Anadolu / Getty Images

What actually needs to be verified before the car can spend

Having money in a digital wallet is not the same as having the right to spend it.

A wallet with a balance works like a blank check. It can move money anywhere but carries no record of who was actually supposed to move it, or whether the person behind the authorization was legitimate.

Once the money is gone, proving what should have happened gets very difficult very fast.

“The core challenge is not payment execution itself, but establishing a trusted and verifiable chain of authorization,” Logan Xie, leader of KuCoin AI Lab, told TheStreet.

That chain has to link the owner, the vehicle or agent, the merchant, and the payment infrastructure. Every link needs to check out at the moment the transaction happens, not days later when someone files a complaint.

The forensic tools to reconstruct a dispute after the fact are well developed. Stopping the wrong transaction from going through in the first place is what the current round of infrastructure building is actually about.

“Before a business can safely let a machine transact for it, three things need to be provable at the moment of the transaction, not reconstructed afterward from logs: that the agent is authorised to spend up to a specific limit, that it’s acting for a real, verified human or a business, and that the human or business isn’t sanctioned,” Varun added.

When the car gets it wrong, who actually pays for it?

This is the question that will determine how quickly people trust their cars with their money.

If a car makes an unauthorized payment, every party involved will have a reason to say it was not their problem. The software vendor built what it was asked to build. The manufacturer provided a vehicle. The payment network processed a valid transaction. The owner says they never told the car to do that.

Somebody still has to cover the cost. Without a clear framework, that person is usually the owner.

“Machines may execute transactions, but accountability must remain attributable to identifiable parties,” Logan explained.

His position is that responsibility should follow the authorization chain and land where the control actually broke down.

Owner set the rules and the car followed them? The owner takes the risk. Agent went outside those rules? Responsibility shifts to wherever the control failed, whether that was the software, the payment rail, or the merchant.

Every party needs to define its role upfront in a way that can be verified before a transaction clears, not argued over in a dispute process months later.

“Whoever it was that set the policy that caused the issue should ultimately be responsible,” Yaniv added.

He also argued that users should be the ones setting their own policies. Defaults from the manufacturer are fine, and some minimum standards from regulators make sense. But the person who owns the car should be able to adjust how it operates and own the consequences of those choices.

The connected-car economy needs that individual accountability built in from the start, not bolted on after the first major dispute.

Related: Elon Musk sends a strong message to Tesla and SpaceX investors