Agentic commerce: The new frontier for digital money and digital identity
Agentic commerce is no longer a thought experiment: it is the coming era of both retail and wholesale business. At its core, it demands answers to two deceptively simple questions: Who are you? and How can you pay? In the age of AI-powered agents, those questions are directed not at people or businesses or other organisations, but at their economic avatars, the bots, acting on their behalf. If that sounds a little futuristic, look at how quickly the new landscape is unfolding in front of the fintech sector. Google, the networks, Stripe, Coinbase and others are all working on frameworks for non-human participants to transact, signalling that the future of transactions will be as much about agents and their wallets as it is about customers and their bank accounts. I think that we can all see that agents will manage bills, optimise spending and execute purchases more effectively than most people. I think I’m a pretty average person when it comes to finance, but I’m sure even the most rudimentary bot can do better than me when it comes to finding the best savings account, the best reward scheme, the best deal for everything. Agents will negotiate with merchants, apply loyalty points and even reschedule subscriptions. Payments, once the friction in commerce, will become ambient: as a typical
consumer. When I buy something at the supermarket, I will neither know nor care whether value moves from me to the merchant via an 8583 pull, a 2022 push or an x402 transfer. My agent will work out what is the best value for me and get on with it. While payments are becoming ambient, identity is becoming indispensable, which indicates to me where real value opportunities are. The key challenge is not the ‘how can you pay?’ noted above but ‘who are you?’. (Actually, I think it’s the much more important ‘what are you?’, but that’s for a future discussion!) Money will be ambient, embedded, and delegated, and humans will be liberated from the mechanics to focus on what really matters The need for identity to enable transactions is why solving the know your agent (KYA) problem is so central to the evolution of financial services. Unlike humans, bots lack biometrics or government IDs. They need verifiable credentials to prove who created them, who authorises them, and what they are permitted to do. In fact, in agentic commerce, the agent should never impersonate the individual. It should present its own verifiable credentials,
consented to by the human it represents. What I have labelled ‘the ABCs of identity’ (that is, know your agent, know your business and know your customer) will set fintech strategy in the years ahead: because agent commerce is not an extension of e-commerce or m-commerce, but a paradigm shift that fuses identity, money with AI. A few years ago, I wrote in Wired magazine that the real revolution is customers getting AI, not institutions getting AI. I stand by that prediction! The future customer is not human but algorithmic. If we build the right identity and regulatory frameworks, bots will transact securely on our behalf. Money will be ambient, embedded, and delegated, and humans will be liberated from the mechanics to focus on what really matters.
David Birch A fintech author, advisor and commentator on digital financial services, David Birch argued that Identity Is The New Money as far back
as 2014 in a book of the same name. Based in the UK, Birch is also a venture partner at 1414 Ventures, a US-based fund that invests in early-stage startups in the digital identity market. Website: 15mb.ltd X: @dgwbirch
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