Tag Archives: stripe

Agentic Recap – Last Week’s Big Announcements. 

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Sorry for delay.. Just had a new grandson on Wednesday, and everyone is doing fine. One quick note, if your looking for one of my old posts, or topics like AP2, try my new search. Completely rebuilt to look through my posts and all “trusted” authorities on a topic.

Exec Summary

Last week’s flurry of announcements confirmed our thesis: Agentic commerce is off to a slow start, and the “machine-to-machine” (M2M) revolution is currently a “human-in-the-loop” (HIL) reality. Despite the hype, machines aren’t autonomously settling transactions yet; they are discovery engines landing consumers on retailer checkout pages. While “lab” pilots show machine to machine transactions are technically possible – in a lab. The reality is conversational commerce, more like an enhanced search. 

Key Items covered today

  1. Agentic Hurdles are huge. Changing consumer behavior, shifting risk, economic “Gordian Knot” of value creation and pricing, Trust and Authorization, …etc. The payment piece is the “easy” party.  There will be no wholesale change in the next 2-3 years, merchants and marketplaces want to retain consumer behavior and leverage their own data, the future for most transactions will be a checkout on the merchant’s website. 

  2. Card networks are firmly established as the payment method and will retain their role as the identity infrastructure of the internet. Stablecoin is a settlement  innovation, and cards can sit on top. Visa is at least 2 yrs ahead of MA. MA’s agent pay integration to Google’s AP2 mandates is still a lab experiment that will require both Issuer and merchant approval. For example Banks will want the full intent mandate to take the risk, something neither Google nor Merchants will be keen to share. 

  3. OpenAI’s abandonment of their own wallet is very significant and a realization that merchants hold the keys in the early days of eCom, with many major merchants wanting a PAR to reference COF, not a tokenized credential where they own the risk. 

  4. Visa’s two big announcements are significant. The partnership with Bridge to issue stablecoin linked cards in 100 markets will propel a new market for cards in M2M based UCs.  “INTELLIGENT AUTHORIZATION” a universal acceptance API against different schemes and payment types, thus eliminating the need for costly infrastructure rebuilds. 

  5. When perfect authentication does happen, it will be a watershed moment for payments and every entity that provides risk services. Processors will be particularly hard hit, afterall how will processors differentiate when every payment type has 0 fraud and 100% authorization rate. Shopify and other merchant service providers (MSPs will gain significant leverage and expand their own VAS). This dynamic explains why Stripe is investing so heavily in Stablecoin, its an effort to differentiate and improve speed and a developer community in something unique.

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AP2 as Merchant Signals – 4 Scenarios 

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Today I’m outlining three near-term scenarios (24 months) for how AP2 signals will work in agentic commerce. Per my blog last week, AP2 is the agentic payment scheme with the most momentum (160+ partners), but in the immediate term (2026–2027), it will operate primarily in a “signals” metaphor for 3 main reasons:

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Stablecoin Scenarios

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Summary

The digital asset ecosystem has graduated from a decade of speculative experimentation to a decisive phase of infrastructure modernization. For fifteen years, the discourse surrounding blockchain technology has been dominated by the volatility of crypto-assets, effectively obscuring the underlying utility of the technology. That era has concluded. We are now witnessing the industrialization of the sector, where stablecoins have emerged not as a new form of money, but as a fundamental settlement innovation (see blog).

The GENIUS Act has provided the regulatory clarity required to transition stablecoins from the periphery of finance to its very core. This legislative milestone has catalyzed a geopolitical shockwave, prompting European finance ministers to declare U.S. stablecoins a greater threat to monetary sovereignty than trade tariffs. But while the Genius act codified “trust” in an instrument (reducing settlement risk to stablecoin issuer balance sheet), it does not address disputes and broader governance issues associated with managing participants across diverse processes and regulatory regimes.

The maturation of stablecoins is not a revolution that overthrows established banks and payments system; it is an evolution that upgrades it. The rails are being replaced while the train is moving, and those who understand the mechanics of the new tracks will determine the destination of global capital.

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Card VAS Tailwind – Agentic

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I’ll be honest, I’ve been watching the “agentic commerce” hype train with a healthy dose of skepticism. The idea that AI agents will soon handle all our shopping feels like a solution in search of a problem. Yet, looking at the data, I have to admit something massive is happening under the surface. We are in the midst of a fundamental change in how the internet works, and while the “Agentic Era” is still 3+ years away, the tremors are already breaking the internet’s business model.

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Stripe Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP)

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The best, and perhaps only, operable protocol that can solve agent payment issues today.

Stripe’s Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), co-developed with OpenAI, is a functional leap forward in enabling agentic commerce. While its open-source nature invites broad adoption, Stripe is uniquely able to “make it work” by leveraging its existing fraud-fighting assets. Another less reported benefit of ACP is payment rail agnostic operation. ACP will work for paybybank, PIX, EFTPOS, Swish, Bizum or anything else. Anywhere that Stipe’s device graph and Radar (Risk/Fraud) are effective. Stripe’s secure payment token plus risk signals allow merchants to operate the way they do today (no operational change).

ACP may only have a limited 2-3 yr runway as more advanced authentication methods become mainstream, and network rule sets/services advance to serve all agent providers (leveling the playing field).

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Genius Law – What to Expect?

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Yesterday President Trump signed the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act into law, clearing the path for dollar-backed stablecoins. As I’ve argued before, the future of money is a new model of trust, and this legislation provides the regulatory certainty needed for that trust. 

The GENIUS Act is a landmark piece of legislation. It establishes a dual charter system, enabling both federal and state-regulated stablecoin issuers. The key provisions are precisely what the industry needed: a mandate for 1:1 reserves with high-quality liquid assets like cash and short-term treasuries, a prohibition on reusing those reserves, and the designation of issuers as financial institutions under the Bank Secrecy Act. This isn’t just about compliance; it’s about building a foundation of trust that can be exported globally.

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Stablecoin Winners and Losers

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Summary

Winners:

  • Card Networks (Mostly Insulated): Their core business as ubiquitous real-time messaging networks for authorization and value-added services is largely unaffected. They are the top on=ramp (Visa Direct) and the top off-ramp (linked card). Networks will expand services to support issuer demand for stablecoin settlement and services. Within OECD 20 markets, there is no merchant demand for stablecoin in eCommerce.  
  • Emerging Markets: Stablecoins provide crucial financial access, inflation hedging, and efficient remittances where traditional banking is broken or local currencies are unstable, especially in Africa.  
  • Edge and Non-Card UCs. Low value payments, remittances, … 
  • Corporate Treasury and Treasury Platforms: Fortune 100 enterprises gain significant efficiencies in cash management through real-time liquidity, reduced costs, and enhanced transparency.  
  • Dollarization – US Treasury: The growth of USD-pegged stablecoins, driven by regulations like the Genius Act, creates substantial demand for US Treasuries, reinforcing dollar dominance. Tether is already a top buyer.  
  • Existing Banks: Despite some fee pressure, banks are adapting by integrating stablecoins into their services, leveraging their customer relationships and regulatory expertise to remain central players.  
  • Fintech Enablers (Stripe, Shopify): These platforms expand their global reach by making stablecoin acceptance and payouts easier for merchants, particularly in cross-border commerce.  
  • KYC/AML Service Providers: Increased regulatory clarity and stablecoin adoption drive demand for robust identity verification and anti-money laundering services.
  • Wallets/Consumer Champion? PayPal? Enabling wallets in non-carded markets and a new model in eCom and POS (this is Stripe Privy).

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Message to Bank CEOs as Stablecoins Take Hold

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Bank Payment Strategy in the World of Agentic and Stablecoin

Stripe’s recent moves are massive and will solve stablecoin acceptance (globally). When (and if) a consumer champion goes all in on stablecoin we will see change in payment innovation akin to the “age of enlightenment”.  What are banks to do?


Cards are the most profitable banking product in the history of retail banking, and the power of banking is unlocked within the networks that link them (blog). While the power of banking is unlocked in networks, network innovation is like herding cats as each stakeholder works to protect their existing investments and competitive advantage (see Network Innovation).

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Stripe Acquires Privy – Link expands as Does Stripe’s “Gatekeeper” Position

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Stripe’s announcedits acquisition of Privy yesterday, web3 wallet infrastructure platform that enables developers to easily build and integrate secure, self-custodial wallets into their applications with well defined APIs (consistent with everything Stripe does). 

IMHO this signals an acceleration of Stripe’s strategy to dominate the intersection of eCom, wallets, Finance and stablecoin, with a likely product focus on embedding user-friendly stablecoin wallets directly into merchant checkouts and developer platforms. This will greatly expand and “juice” stablecoin adoption in eCom, particularly when combined with LINK. While it COULD present a slight challenge to cards, I don’t see near term impact there (per blog last week). US and EU consumers prefer card, merchants do as well (due to governance and customer support), ROW, micro payments, cross-border, small merchant acquiring/payfacs (and other edge UCs are a different story). 

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