"The checkout button is starting to lose its original place in the buying process as payments move upstream into AI interfaces.     That shift is now surfacing inside Google’s ecosystem, where BNPL firms Affirm and Klarna are embedding installment payments into Google Search and the Gemini app through Google Pay. The integrations move BNPL directly into AI-driven shopping experiences, where discovery, comparison, and purchasing happen within a single conversational interaction rather than across separate search funnels and checkout pages."