Inside Stripe's push into agentic artificial intelligence

• Key Insights: Stripe expands agentic commerce and stablecoins. 
• What's at Stake: Payment companies are adding tech and protocols for agentic AI, creating an arms race.  
• Forward Look: Stripe is also adding stablecoin tech. 
  

With agentic commerce and stablecoins quickly evolving, Stripe is placing its bet by expanding its payments partnership with OpenAI and adding new crypto technology. 

Stripe and OpenAI have launched Instant Checkout in ChatGPT. ChatGPT users in the U.S. will be able to make purchases from U.S.-based Etsy sellers with a pending integration with Shopify making the ChatGPT "buy button" available for about one million merchants. At the same time, Stripe and OpenAI have released Agentic Commerce Protocol, a standard for agentic AI-powered transactions; and Open Issuance, which enables businesses to launch and manage their own stablecoins.

Stripe's rollouts come as dozens of banks and technology companies consider issuing stablecoins, while payment companies build agentic AI protocols to guide commerce and payments involving agentic AI, which supports tasks with little or no human intervention..  "Commerce is about to change fundamentally and we're talking everyday about what it will take to adopt agentic commerce," Emily Sands, head of data and AI at Stripe, told American Banker. 

Stripe's busy week

Stripe's announcements over the past 48 hours are designed to make it easy for merchants to tap payment trends without relying on another technology firm. 

"Agents are going to be buying and paying on our behalf," Sands said. "We're working on making that work for consumers, merchants and the 'agents.'"

For example, a ChatGPT user can ask for product recommendations in the Checkout feature, then is presented with a Stripe-powered checkout as an option once the buyer finds what they want. The buyer can then use their chosen payment method (Stripe's Link payment app or digital wallets and cards). Stripe issues a "shared payment token" that enables ChatGPT to execute the payment without exposing the buyer's credentials. The shared payment token is presented to the merchant and buyer's digital shopping cart. 

ChatGPT then sends the token to the merchant through an application programming interface to process the transaction. The merchant can use Stripe or another payment provider with Stripe continuing to provide risk scores to mitigate fraud.

"This technology is interesting because the design is meant to provide merchants with the same level of control, data and insight about customer spend and behavior that they get today, but with an added agentic capability that doesn't sacrifice the connection to the consumer," Tony DeSanctis, senior director of Cornerstone Advisors, told American Banker. "The functionality is critical to the adoption of the new technology by merchants, and the ability for them to leverage Stripe and Shopify, two of the biggest payment providers, increases their capacity to scale."

To guide transactions, Stripe and OpenAI have produced a protocol to support "conversations" between businesses and AI agents. Stripe said this allows merchants to sell through AI agents while controlling what is being sold, how it's branded, how transactions are processed and fulfillment. 

"The merchant only has to enter a couple of lines," Sands said, adding the learning curve for merchants for agentic commerce should not be difficult. 

Another new Stripe product, Open Issuance, supports businesses that are launching their own stablecoins. Stripe argues this will allow merchants to financially benefit from a stablecoin without using a party stablecoin issuer, such as a bank or fintech. Stripe says it can manage the reserves that back the stablecoin, liquidity and regulatory compliance  through Bridge, a stablecoin technology company that Stripe acquired earlier this year. Stripe additionally plans to apply for a trust charter in New York and nationally to gain regulatory cover to develop more stablecoin tools, according to Bloomberg.

Stripe earlier this year issued artificial intelligence and stablecoin technology that accesses tens of billions of transactions, capturing signals about payments that traditional models miss. Stripe also launched Stablecoin Financial Accounts to businesses in 101 countries. The stablecoin accounts enable business owners in countries with volatile currencies to hedge against inflation while selling and buying from firms in countries with developed economies. This mix of digital payments, blockchain technology and stablecoin support position Stripe to sell into the stablecoin market.

A land rush

Stripe is not alone in building a network effect for agentic commerce through a mix of partnerships and protocols. Coinbase and Google have built similar protocols, and the major card brands are supporting agentic commerce throughout their networks.

"There is a bit of a land rush going on, where multiple actors, including Visa, Mastercard and Google are all targeting this space, with rival agentic commerce specifications," Aaron McPherson, principal at AFM Consulting, told American Banker. "This adds to merchant confusion and paralysis, as they wait to see which ecosystem reaches a critical mass of consumers and merchants."

Stripe's protocol is designed to promote interoperability and openness to other agentic models, according to Sands.

"This is not about OpenAI or Stripe, it's about making sure the broader payment ecosystem has smoother rails," Sands said. These types of protocols are going to be necessary to maintain trust across an agentic commerce flow, according to Aaron Press, research director at IDC. "Consumers need to be confident that the system will only transact when authorized, merchants need to know that the agent is authorized to transact, and banks need to be confident that the agent is acting on behalf of the actual customer," Press told American Banker.