Black Friday just hit a massive milestone — $11.8 billion in online sales, and AI played a bigger role than most people realize. While everyone's talking about discounts and deals, the real story is how machine learning algorithms are reshaping digital commerce from the ground up.

Think about it: personalized recommendations, dynamic pricing, inventory predictions — AI is handling the heavy lifting behind those checkout buttons. But here's what's interesting: traditional payment rails still dominate these transactions. Credit cards, bank transfers, the usual suspects.

That $11.8 billion flowing through centralized systems makes you wonder about alternative payment infrastructures. Crypto adoption in e-commerce remains marginal, yet the technology for instant, borderless settlements exists. The gap between AI-optimized shopping experiences and outdated payment technology is getting harder to ignore.

Some merchants are experimenting with stablecoin payments and blockchain-based loyalty programs. Not mainstream yet, but the infrastructure is maturing. When consumers eventually demand faster, cheaper cross-border transactions, the rails are already being built.

Record spending numbers are cool, but the payment evolution happening underneath? That's the plot twist nobody's watching closely enough.