“This is the best product in the history of the world but distribution is broken,” says Ferdinand Dabitz, holding up a $100 bill. Even though U.S. dollars are the world's favorite currency, says Dabitz, many people seeking to get them must rely on an antiquated system of banks with limited hours staffed by clerks. The 25-year-old Dabitz is the CEO of a new type of bank called Augustus that he says addresses this deficiency thanks to a payments architecture designed around AI and stablecoins, not humans.
Ilan Zerbib, who spent five years as Shopify's director of engineering for payments, is building a solution that could eliminate these backend infrastructure headaches for non-technical creators. Last summer, Zerbib launched Sapiom, a startup developing the financial layer that allows AI agents to securely purchase and access software, APIs, data, and compute - essentially creating a payment system that lets AI automatically buy the services it needs.
To prepare for a future in which AI can make purchases on your behalf, companies are laying the groundwork for agentic transactions, and PayPal is the latest to join the effort. Also: I let ChatGPT Atlas do my Walmart shopping for me - here's how the AI browser agent did On Tuesday, the company launched its agent commerce services, a suite of solutions designed for merchants to enable AI-driven shopping experiences that build on PayPal's existing payment infrastructure.