Witnessing the Reinvention of Money Movement
After 15+ years in payments, I've witnessed plenty of so-called revolutions. From American Express's mobile UI push to PayPal's groundbreaking SaaS strategy to Stripe’s API-first leap, I’ve seen big shifts – but none match what’s unfolding today.
What's happening now—the convergence of AI agents with programmable currencies—makes those shifts look like warm-up acts. Autonomous commerce agents aren't just executing transactions; they're reimagining them. Stablecoins aren't merely digital dollars; they're programmable value. Together, they're rewiring the fundamental architecture of money movement. This isn't incremental change—it's the complete reinvention of how value moves through our economy.
Taking it Back… What Do These Terms Even Mean?
Agentic commerce empowers AI systems to negotiate, purchase, and manage transactions without continuous human oversight. These digital agents at minimum act as autonomous representatives, executing commercial decisions based on predetermined parameters and learning from transaction patterns to optimize outcomes. It is, of course, very plausible that these agents then self-develop intelligence based on those learned patterns applied to both B2C and B2B transactions.
Stablecoins provide the ideal settlement layer for this new paradigm (see my partner, Brendan Dickinson, and my previous note on why they are the future of money movement) —offering the programmability of cryptocurrencies with the price stability necessary for commercial applications. Unlike volatile cryptocurrencies, stablecoins maintain consistent purchasing power, making them more stable, predictable and potentially suitable for everyday transactions.
It is together that these technologies address longstanding challenges in our financial system: excessive transaction friction, inefficient settlement processes, limited access, and manual intervention requirements that create bottlenecks, increase risks and frustrate users.
The Market Reality: Beyond the Hype
While the potential feels immediate, perspective is essential here. Credit cards still represent only a fraction of global payments despite decades of availability. And in the U.S., cash has remained >10% of spend as long as I’ve been in the industry! Similarly, stablecoins are in their early adoption phase, though growing remarkably fast. But do your parents use stables? No!
For stablecoins to achieve mainstream adoption, they must become:
- Widely accepted as payment mechanisms;
- Easier to store than bank deposits;
- Perceived as risk-free;
- Integrate seamlessly with existing financial infrastructure;
- Obvious in how they increase value & usability.
Major Financial Institutions & Marketplaces Are Moving Us Mainstream
While a catalogue of announcements over the last month wouldn’t be too productive, a select few financial institutional launches and marketplace rollouts help manifest how this is all mainstream:
Card Networks: Both Visa and Mastercard are leveraging their relationships with over 150 million merchants to enable stablecoin and crypto-backed card spending globally, positioning themselves as bridges between traditional and emerging payment systems.
Stripe: Recently launched capabilities that allow developers to programmatically issue stablecoin-linked Visa cards across multiple countries through a single API, eliminating traditional requirements for separate legal entities, banking relationships, and compliance processes. Stripe's new Order Intents API simplifies agent creation and enables users to deploy purchasing agents for financial services access.
Circle: Announced plans to become a closed money movement network itself, expanding its stablecoin infrastructure while building institutional-grade services and regulatory frameworks to accelerate adoption. They are now a new closed-loop!
Marketplaces: Amazon rolled out the ‘Buy for Me’ feature, letting its shopping agent purchase products—even from third-party sites—directly within the Amazon app. And of course, Google launched their ‘AI Shopping Mode’ not only for buying but also virtually trying on clothing. AI Shopping Mode already has 50 billion product listings and the assistant is embedded throughout the buying process, offering hyper-personalized and frictionless checkout.
These moves confirm that established players recognize the paradigm shift underway and are actively repositioning themselves within the new ecosystem while redefining it.
Strategic Investment Opportunities
As this new ecosystem develops, several investment frontiers stand out to us as market-making opportunities for startups:
1. Interoperable payments infrastructure & backward compatibility
Protocols connecting autonomous agents to stablecoin networks present key value capture opportunities. Like Plaid's data network platform connecting fintech apps with traditional banks, ventures can similarly connect agents to stablecoins. Founders building translation protocols and ledgers to track across currency types (like Knox-Networks) unlock meaningful money movement solutions. Backward compatibility approaches should capture enormous value here in particular during the transition phase. Technologies connecting new agentic commerce with legacy systems solve critical adoption barriers as well—addressing both consumer accessibility and enterprise implementation challenges. Dakota, for instance, offers business bank accounts for all business types backed by stablecoins. And it's critical that the traditional systems do not sacrifice operational stability, security and compliance while accessing new agentic capabilities. There's a large white-space opportunity for new solutions to solve this challenge.
2. Next-generation risk management, compliance & identity
Autonomous purchasing systems introduce novel attack vectors requiring specialized fraud and security solutions. Regulatory frameworks will evolve accordingly. Ventures that offer up solutions to future-proof enterprises against fraud (like Canonical Labs with its vulnerability identification and AI tooling) and compliance (like Crosswise embedding AI across enterprise GRC functions) become immutable line items, with increasing importance and budget as money movement becomes borderless. And there is awesome value in serving up transparency and observability throughout the money movement to ensure all human parties understand the rationale behind each autonomous decision. Security controls gain critical importance within the tech stack, making control mechanisms like Portia AI all the more crucial. And, as AI agents handle increasingly significant transactions, novel mechanisms establishing their trustworthiness become vital as well.
3. Vertical-specific solutions
Just as SaaS eventually specialized by industry (think Cedar, XERO, Jobber), most aspects of agentic commerce will deliver greater value when tailored to specific verticals. What’s particularly exciting is the promise of efficiency within highly regulated and slower-moving industries with unique workflows such as healthcare, accounting & construction- many of the archaic & least efficient steps in these processes don’t require optimized UI nor human intervention in the new paradigm! Solutions that are built for specific workflows, targeted users and regulation stand to capture massive value in growing markets ripe for disruption. This is a tremendous opportunity for B2B builders!
Looking Ahead
The convergence of agentic commerce and stablecoins represents a fundamental shift in how economic activity will function in the digital age. While the timeline may extend longer than enthusiasts predict (hi, that's me!), the trajectory is clear: we're moving toward a future where autonomous agents and programmable money reshape commerce at its core.
For founders and investors alike, this transformation creates unprecedented opportunities to build new infrastructure, create novel user experiences, and solve longstanding problems in our financial systems. The real question isn't whether this shift will happen, but rather which teams will successfully build the critical infrastructure and applications that bring this vision to mainstream adoption.
The payments revolution has arrived—this time powered by intelligence and programmability at every layer of the stack. Let’s go… or even better, deploy your agent to go transact!