Agentic Payments
Abstract
An agent-native financial infrastructure for the future of commerce
Description
It’s increasingly consensus that the era of AI-powered agents approaches. But if that’s true, are the systems we have today fit for purpose to support that future state? Menial tasks like purchasing groceries or buying plane tickets are commonly cited use cases, and because these are automations of existing behaviors, it seems likely that our existing infrastructure can be bent to enable these new capabilities with little resistance.
But as purchasing behavior matures beyond the mundane, new controls will be required to provide the assurance and stability that the market will demand. Custodians and escrow systems, Know Your Customer (or Agent) security, authentication chains and hundreds more functions have been built over decades to ensure that (human) managers maintain control over their funds. These systems are rigid and slow because they were designed for human-scale processing. This previously sufficient capacity will prove fatal to the immense velocity of micro / atomic payments and it’s my view that agent-native infrastructure to required.
Working Thoughts
I’m a sucker for mental models and a high level segmentation is:
What an agent is paid (amount and why)
How an agent gets paid (wallet and protocol)
How an agent can pay (wallet and approvals)
My conversations with financial operators tend to gravitate toward payment revocability rather than robust approval flows. The immutability of blockchain solutions appears to be a no-go. This suggests that either more centralized solutions will take hold, or stopgap products like agent-focused cyber insurance will be required.
The combination of near-frictionless atomic transactions and 24/7 autonomous execution would unlock entirely new markets that seem preposterous today. My personal white whale is autonomous vehicle traffic orchestration—self-driving cars that actively bid for passing and yielding. Time = money.
This space is obvious, which makes it harder to convince oneself of a true alpha opportunity. Agent systems are peak tech zeitgeist right now. Despite the surge in venture interest, we’re still very early in deployment, and if agents represent a new platform, then we really can’t recognize the exponential curve from our current position in time.
It is true, however, that competition will be fierce in this arena. The requirements for founder domain pedigree, execution velocity, and learning speed are a level or two higher than normal. A CEO probably needs to have a uniquely strong reality distortion field for resource magnetism.
Relevant Companies
How an agent gets paid - Nevermined.io, Skyfire
Incumbent systems - Stripe | Agent Toolkit, Mastercard | Agent Pay, Coinbase | x402