Meta plans to fund a free Muse agent with a cut of purchases paid through Stripe, Shop Pay and PayPal

"A small fee from transactions" is the whole commercial term so far. Meta did not disclose the rate, or whether merchants or shoppers would pay it ^[1]. Zuckerberg set out the order of events himself: "We're standing behind this by making Muse free for a huge number of tokens, with the expectation that over time we will profit by taking a small fee from transactions," he said ^[2].

On payments, Meta is working with the intermediaries. Muse accesses the full product catalog on Shopify and pays through Stripe's Link and Shop Pay, with PayPal also supported ^[6]. Meta adds its cut to orders that those three checkouts process, so it is competing for a slice of each order's margin. Who gives up that slice depends on who pays. If merchants pay, the retailers now joining as connectors ^[5] are paying something close to a referral commission. If shoppers pay, the fee sits awkwardly beside Zuckerberg's claim that the agent will make money for its users ^[4]. A fee small enough that neither side notices leaves subscriptions carrying the business.

The only public revenue number fits that last case. One Wall Street estimate, reported by Cryptopolitan, puts Muse revenue at about $10.8 billion a year ^[9]. It assumes a billion users by the end of 2027, with at least 3% paying ^[9]. Three percent of a billion is 30 million payers ^[1]. Spread $10.8 billion across them and each pays $360 a year, or $30 a month ^[2], a price between the two paid plans ^[3]. To me that looks like a subscription estimate, with the transaction fee small or left out. Meta's gain in market value since launch, as Cryptopolitan reported it ^[8], is about 18.5 times that end-2027 revenue scenario ^[3].

Fee income depends on what Muse is used for. A cut of a Sephora basket is easy to define. A cut of a bill that got smaller is harder to charge, and the wins Meta's chief AI officer Alexandr Wang cited were savings: lower insurance costs, recovered refunds and a cable bill cut by $85 a month ^[7], or $1,020 a year ^[4].

I think Muse is, for now, a subscription business with a checkout option attached. I would be wrong if transaction fees turn out larger than subscription revenue once Meta reports Muse's numbers. The counter-case is the developer queue Wang described ^[10], because every commerce connector adds orders a fee can be taken on. "I think this could be a generational opportunity to start building for a new platform as it takes off," Wang said ^[13].