The founder of Natural argues that the total addressable market for agentic payments isn't just a replacement for Stripe (a Payment Service Provider). It encompasses the functions of a bank (storing balances), a PSP (processing transactions), and a network (like Visa), creating a fundamentally new, all-in-one infrastructure layer.

Users increasingly expect to complete purchases within AI chat interfaces. This trend, called "agentic commerce," requires new tools like Stripe Projects that allow agents to programmatically sign up for and pay for services like Vercel or Cloudflare to complete end-to-end tasks for users.

Billion-dollar merchants routinely use three to five payment processors to optimize costs, approval rates, and regional routing. Because approximately 30% of cards change annually due to expirations, network migrations, or fraud, storing credentials in an independent vault prevents merchants from having to synchronize network tokens across redundant processor vaults.

A key bottleneck preventing AI agents from performing meaningful tasks is the lack of secure access to user credentials. Companies like 1Password are building a foundational "trust layer" that allows users to authorize agents on-demand while maintaining end-to-end encryption. This secure credentialing infrastructure is a critical unlock for the entire agentic AI economy.

Equipping AI agents with payment credentials transforms them from advisory tools into autonomous buyers, initiating a new wallet war. Wallets like Stripe Link, Shop Pay, and PayPal are competing to become the default payment provider for agents, mirroring past industry battles for default placement within consumer apps.

When platforms issue one-time virtual cards for agent transactions, customer service channels and follow-on subscriptions fail. New network agentic tokens resolve this by passing a bounded token tied to the user's actual card directly to merchants, preserving chargebacks and subscription upsells.

Stripe intentionally designed its Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) to be provider-agnostic, working with any payments processor and any AI agent. This strategic decision to build an open standard, rather than a proprietary product, aims to grow the entire agentic commerce ecosystem instead of creating a walled garden.

Looking toward 2030, Visa is preparing for "agentic e-commerce," where AI agents execute purchases autonomously. By developing secure, programmable digital credentials for machines, Visa is positioning its network to be the underlying trust layer, ensuring it remains the toll collector even when humans are not directly involved in transactions.

For agents to buy on users' behalf, merchants need a shared technical language to expose catalogs and process payments securely. Protocols like the one Stripe co-created with OpenAI allow merchants to sell through new AI channels without ceding the customer relationship or control over fraud.