Agentic Commerce & Stablecoins – The Next Era of Intelligent Buying
Discover how agentic commerce powered by LLMs and stablecoins is transforming fintech and embedded finance. Learn how Stripe embedded finance, MAS/HK regulation and agentic AI shape your business.
Agentic Commerce: The Next Era of Intelligent Buying
In a world where large language models (LLMs) are increasingly central to discovery and search, agentic commerce is emerging as the next frontier for both customers and businesses. For fintech startups and professional‑tech firms in climate tech and embedded finance, the window of opportunity is now. In this article, we explore how agentic AI will transform decision-making, the role stablecoins and regulatory frameworks (notably in Singapore and Hong Kong) play, and how embedded finance platforms, such as Stripe, bring the infrastructure to support this shift. At STB we guide you on how to leverage these forces to stay ahead.
Introduction: What Is Agentic Commerce?
Put simply, agentic commerce refers to a digital ecosystem in which intelligent “agents” — powered by LLMs and AI orchestration engines — act on behalf of users to discover, evaluate, transact, and manage outcomes. These are not just recommendation engines, but proactive agents that ask questions, compare options, negotiate, make and manage purchases or subscriptions, and even handle settlement and reconciliation.
Agentic commerce goes beyond simple search and recommendation engines. It involves AI agents that:
Understand User Intent: These agents can interpret complex user needs and preferences, even when expressed vaguely.
Proactively Seek Solutions: Instead of passively waiting for queries, they actively search for products or services that match user requirements.
Negotiate and Optimize: They can compare prices, negotiate terms, and optimize purchases based on pre-defined criteria.
Automate Repetitive Tasks: They can handle recurring purchases, subscription management, and other routine tasks.
Learn and Adapt: They continuously learn from user behavior and feedback, improving their performance over time.
In this paradigm:
Discovery shifts from “search and choice” to “agent and delegate”.
The user need not manually browse catalogues; the agent finds what’s best, based on criteria, preferences, and risk profiles.
For businesses, the purchasing process becomes an interaction between enterprise agents (procurement) and vendor agents rather than just a human buyer vs a seller.
Underlying all of this is a bright orchestration of payments, fintech services, embedded finance, and, importantly, stablecoins that enable seamless settlement across jurisdictions or platforms where trust, regulation, and friction are significant issues.
For your fintech or pro‑tech business, enabling agentic commerce means preparing for a buyer ecosystem that expects their systems to speak to each other, transact with minimal human overhead, and optimise for cost, speed, compliance and sustainability (especially relevant in climate tech).
The Role of LLMs
Large Language Models (LLMs) are the key enablers of agentic commerce. Their ability to understand natural language, generate creative text formats, and reason about complex information makes them ideal for building intelligent buying agents. LLMs can:
Process Natural Language Queries: They can understand complex search queries and extract relevant information.
Generate Product Descriptions: They can create compelling product descriptions and marketing copy.
Personalize Recommendations: They can tailor product recommendations based on individual user preferences.
Answer Customer Questions: They can provide instant answers to customer questions, improving the overall shopping experience.
Simulate Human Interaction: They can engage in natural-sounding conversations with customers, building trust and rapport.
Agentic AI will transform the way customers and businesses make decisions.
For consumers, it means:
Reduced Time and Effort: Finding the right product or service becomes effortless.
Improved Decision Quality: AI agents can analyze vast amounts of data to identify the best options.
Personalized Experiences: Shopping experiences are tailored to individual needs and preferences.
Increased Savings: AI agents can negotiate better prices and identify cost-saving opportunities.
For businesses, it means:
Increased Sales: AI agents can drive sales by proactively identifying and engaging with potential customers.
Improved Customer Satisfaction: Personalized experiences and efficient service lead to increased customer satisfaction and happiness.
Reduced Costs: Automation can reduce operational costs and improve efficiency.
Data-Driven Insights: AI agents can provide valuable insights into customer behavior and market trends.
Why the Time Is Right: LLMs + Embedded Finance + Stablecoins
LLMs as Core to Discovery and Search
Over the last 18‑24 months (since 2024), LLMs have matured from chat assistants to full‑blown agents capable of multi‑step reasoning, planning, and inference. For commerce, this means an agent can read product specifications, match them to a buyer’s preferences (e.g., sustainability criteria, regulatory compliance), negotiate terms, verify availability, and manage payment & settlement. This forms the foundation of agentic commerce.
Stripe, a leading payment infrastructure provider, is well-positioned to play a crucial role in the agentic commerce revolution. Its robust platform and embedded finance features provide the foundation for secure and seamless transactions.
Embedded Finance Enables Seamless Payment & Fintech Services
Embedded finance — integrating payments, lending, accounts, and cards directly into non‑financial platforms — is now mainstream. Stripe’s embedded finance offering, for instance, allows platforms to embed accounts, cards, and financing directly into their product ecosystem.
From a fintech or climate‑tech firm’s standpoint, you are no longer just delivering a product or service; you are producing financial flows, embedded settlement, and value‑chain orchestration. This creates the infrastructure for agents to act: when an agent makes a decision, payment and settlement occur automatically within the platform.
Stripe’s payment infrastructure emphasises security, fraud prevention, and compliance. For example, Stripe’s fraud detection engine (“Radar”) emphasizes machine learning integrated into payment flows.
(Credit Source: Stripe Embedded Payment, click here (for Embedded Payment) and here (for Stripe One Platform infrastructure)
Stripe: Powering the Agentic Commerce Revolution
Stripe's Role in Agentic Commerce
Secure Payment Processing: Stripe's secure payment gateway ensures that transactions are processed safely and reliably.
Global Reach: Stripe supports payments in multiple currencies and countries, enabling businesses to reach an international audience.
Developer-Friendly APIs: Stripe's APIs are easy to use and integrate, allowing developers to build agentic commerce applications quickly.
Embedded Finance Features: Stripe's embedded finance features, including Stripe Treasury and Stripe Capital, offer businesses access to banking and financing services.
Stripe Embedded Finance: Security and Fraud Prevention
Stripe's embedded finance features enable payments to be more secure and reduce the risk of fraud. By integrating directly into the payment flow, these features can:
Verify User Identities: Stripe Identity verifies user identities to prevent fraud and comply with regulations.
Detecting Fraudulent Transactions: Stripe Radar utilizes machine learning to identify and prevent fraudulent transactions in real-time.
Protect Against Chargebacks: Stripe Chargeback Protection helps businesses protect against chargebacks and disputes.
Stablecoins: A New Era of Digital Payments
Stablecoins, cryptocurrencies pegged to a stable asset like the US dollar, are gaining traction as a means of facilitating digital payments. Their stability and efficiency make them attractive for agentic commerce applications.
The Rise of Stablecoins
Price Stability: Unlike volatile cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, stablecoins maintain a stable value, making them suitable for everyday transactions.
Faster Transactions: Stablecoin transactions are typically faster and cheaper than traditional payment methods.
Global Accessibility: Stablecoins can be used anywhere in the world, making them ideal for cross-border payments.
Programmability: Stablecoins can be programmed to automate payments and enforce specific conditions.
Stablecoins Provide the Settlement Layer for Agentic Commerce
When agents operate across multiple platforms, regions, and value chains, traditional payment methods (such as cards and bank wires) introduce friction due to currency conversions, settlement delays, regulatory checks, and increased fraud risks. This is where stablecoins come into play — digital assets pegged to fiat currencies (or other assets) that offer speed, programmability, and global reach.
The regulatory frameworks emerging in Singapore and Hong Kong are significant because they establish trust, recognition, licensin,g and stability for stablecoin issuance and use. For agentic commerce platforms (especially B2B fintechs and pro-tech firms), this means you can build systems with sanctioned, credible, stablecoins rather than ad-hoc digital tokens.
Key regulatory highlights:
Singapore: MAS Stablecoin Framework The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has introduced a regulatory framework for stablecoins, aiming to foster innovation while mitigating risks. The framework focuses on:
Reserve Requirements: Stablecoin issuers are required to hold reserves that are sufficient to back the value of the stablecoins in circulation.
Capital Requirements: Stablecoin issuers are required to maintain adequate capital to absorb potential losses.
Operational Requirements: Stablecoin issuers are required to have robust operational controls and risk management systems.
Hong Kong: Stablecoins Bill Hong Kong is also developing a regulatory framework for stablecoins, with a focus on investor protection and financial stability. The proposed Stablecoins Bill will:
Require Licensing: Stablecoin issuers will be required to obtain a license from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA).
Impose Reserve Requirements: Stablecoin issuers will be required to hold reserves that are sufficient to back the value of the stablecoins in circulation.
Establish Regulatory Oversight: The HKMA will have the power to supervise and regulate stablecoin issuers.
In Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) implemented a licensing regime under the Stablecoins Ordinance, effective August 1, 2025. Any person issuing a fiat‑referenced stablecoin (FRS) in or outside HK but referencing HKD must be licensed. (Hong Kong Government - Regulatory Regime for Stablecoin Issuer)
For a business engaging in agentic commerce, this regulatory clarity means you can confidently integrate stablecoin-based payment/settlement flows across the Asia-Pacific and globally, with compliance risk effectively managed.
Pay3 launched Stabelcoins payments in the Age of Agentic Commerce.
Pay3 is a stablecoin payment platform that has launched an "Agentic Payments Platform." This new platform enables artificial intelligence (AI) agents to conduct and optimize financial transactions using stablecoins autonomously. It integrates stablecoin payments, intelligent routing, and real-time settlement across major blockchains, enabling AI systems to manage tasks such as pricing, billing, and treasury flows for enterprise use cases like cross-border payments and treasury optimization. Backed by a focus on verifiable and scalable agent-to-agent payments, this marks a step toward seamless AI-driven economies.
(Reference news about Pay3 - click here )
“Stablecoins are building the financial infrastructure of tomorrow,” said Priya Karnik, Pay3’s co-founder and chief executive. “At Pay3, we are at the intersection of two generational technologies — agentic AI and stablecoin payments — making finance smarter, faster, and more accessible than ever before.”
(reference to the same article as above Pay3 Recruits AI Agents to Conduct Stablecoin Transactions )
Stablecoin Orchestration Becomes New Blockchain Battleground
As stablecoin use for payments grows, a new "battleground" has emerged for FinTechs competing to provide enterprise-grade "orchestration." This involves creating infrastructure that abstracts away the complexities of using stablecoins, such as crypto wallets, gas fees, and regulatory risks, thereby making it easier for businesses to utilize them like traditional payment systems. Major players, including Mastercard, Visa, Stripe, and Coinbase, are investing heavily in building or acquiring this programmable infrastructure to manage scalable, cross-chain stablecoin payments.
B2B Payment Gateway Scaling Up with Stablecoin
B2B payment network Paystand has acquired Bitwage, a platform specializing in stablecoin-enabled cross-border payouts. The acquisition is intended to deliver enterprise-grade stablecoin settlement and foreign exchange (FX) capabilities on Paystand's network. The goal is to connect stablecoin rails to the B2B economy, providing faster settlement, lower costs, and programmable treasury functions without adding banking complexity.
Resources: Paystand Acquires Bitwage to Promote Stablecoin Payments
Corporate Treasurer and Businesses - Stablecoins
Corporate treasuries are becoming predictive, 24/7 operations, and this shift requires them to utilize new technologies, such as stablecoins and Agentic AI.
AI can analyze massive amounts of transaction data to find risks and opportunities, and it's beginning to work autonomously. Meanwhile, stablecoins and tokenized deposits can facilitate cross-border payments in seconds, rather than days. This is all shown on customizable screens that stream real-time market data, cash flow forecasts, and compliance warnings.
Businesses want the cost-efficiency and rapid transaction speeds of stablecoins, but without sacrificing the usability and integration of their current payment systems.
Summary of key points from this article: CFOs are testing for liquidity at Speed
Here are the key points from the article:
Treasury Transformation: Corporate treasury departments are evolving into "predictive, always-on hubs" that require integrating modern technologies, such as stablecoins and AI, to manage global cash, risk, and liquidity in real-time.
Enterprise Caution: Despite the promise of stablecoins (like settling cross-border payments in seconds), large corporations are moving slowly. They are waiting for regulatory clarity, proven technical reliability, and a more mature ecosystem before committing significant cash flows.
Integration Over Replacement: A significant hurdle for adoption is the difficulty of replacing legacy financial systems. The article highlights solutions like Chainlink's CRE, which acts as an "adapter" to let banks use stablecoin workflows directly from their existing Swift systems, avoiding a costly "rip and replace."
New Corporate-Focused Solutions: Several companies are developing stablecoin solutions aimed directly at enterprise and AI-driven use cases, moving them beyond just crypto trading:
Cloudflare (NET Dollar): A stablecoin designed for machine-to-machine and AI-driven payments, such as real-time micro-settlements for API calls.
Circle: Exploring features like transaction reversal, which would mimic traditional wire recalls and reduce operational risk for treasurers.
Visa: Piloting stablecoins for its corporate money movement platform, allowing businesses to pre-fund cross-border payouts without tying up cash in traditional accounts.
Google: Launching a new protocol (with partners like Coinbase and Amex) to standardize how AI models execute payments, with stablecoin support built-in from the start.
What Agentic Commerce Looks Like in Practice
Scenario: Climate‑Tech Supply Chain Procurement
Imagine a climate‑tech platform ‑ a B2B marketplace supplying carbon‑capture hardware, analytics services, and certifications. Here’s how agentic commerce plays out:
A procurement agent (an LLM-based agent) representing the purchasing company scans the criteria, including emissions target, supplier certifications, budget, delivery timeline, and financing terms.
The agent identifies three suppliers on the platform, negotiates terms (including price, warranty, and deployment schedule), and selects one.
Upon agreement, the agent triggers a payment settlement: funds held in a stablecoin issued under MAS regulation are instantly transferred to the supplier’s account. Due to embedded finance infrastructure, funds may be accepted, converted to the local currency, and recorded automatically.
The platform uses embedded finance (via Stripe APIs) to reconcile invoices, integrate supplier payouts, and monitor risk/fraud (via Stripe’s fraud‑detection tools).
The procurement agent monitors delivery, triggers milestone payments, validates warranty/verification, and captures data back into the company’s ERP/analytics system.
Benefits
Speed: Traditional procurement + payment cycles can take days or weeks. Agentic commerce, combined with stablecoins, compresses this to minutes/hours.
Efficiency: Human intervention is minimised; the agent handles discovery, evaluation, negotiation, and settlement.
Programmability: Smart contracts or workflow automation can trigger payments only upon verified delivery or compliance, reducing risk.
Global reach: Stablecoins and embedded finance networks allow cross‑border transactions without the usual FX/settlement friction.
Security & compliance: Embedded finance infrastructure (e.g., Stripe) ensures fraud prevention, KYC/AML compliance, audit trails; regulatory frameworks (MAS/HKMA) provide trust in stablecoin issuance.
Why Fintech & Pro‑Tech Firms Should Care
For fintech start-ups and professional-tech vendors (especially climate-tech), this means a shift in how platforms and marketplaces are designed and built. Rather than simply matching buyer and seller, platforms need to embed:
agentic AI layers for discovery/transaction orchestration
embedded finance for payments, accounts, cards, and lending
stablecoin settlement options
regulatory compliance frameworks for digital assets, especially if operating in the Asia‑Pacific
By preparing now, you position your business as a next-generation commerce node — not just a vendor or marketplace, but an intelligence-enabled transaction ecosystem.
Designing Your Agentic Commerce Strategy: Key Considerations for Fintech/Pro‑Tech Firms
Here are strategic questions and design principles for your platform roadmap under STB ’s Agentic AI Consulting service.
1. Define the Agentic Value Proposition
What decisions will the agent make on behalf of the user (discovery, evaluation, negotiation, payment, settlement)?
What inputs (preferences, policies, sustainability criteria, risk tolerances) will drive the agent’s logic?
How will you ensure the agent’s behaviour aligns with compliance, audit, and governance requirements (especially in professional‑tech or climate‑tech settings)?
2. Architect Embedded Finance Flows
Which payments, accounts, cards, or financing products will you embed? (e.g., Stripe’s APIs)
How will your system integrate with Stripe (or equivalent) for payments, fraud detection, and reconciliation?
How will you manage payouts, refunds, chargebacks, and dispute management in agent‑driven flows?
3. Stablecoin‑Based Settlement Architecture
Will you accept or issue stablecoins? If so, which tokens, and are they governed under MAS or HKMA regimes?
How will you convert between fiat currencies, stablecoins, and local currencies?
How will you manage reserve‑backing, redemption, and liquidity risk? (MAS demands 100% backing for regulated stablecoins) A&O Shearman+1
How will you monitor token value, counter‑party risk, audit trails and regulatory compliance?
4. Risk, Fraud & Compliance
Agentic commerce introduces automation and autonomy — what guardrails exist to prevent unintended outcomes (e.g., rogue agent purchases, inadequate procurement thresholds)?
Embedded finance flows demand rigorous fraud prevention. Stripe’s Radar solution offers advanced machine‑learning risk detection.
Stablecoin settlement introduces crypto‑asset risk, regulatory risk, and redemption risk. Ensure your governance architecture covers this.
5. Data & Analytics Integration
Agents generate behavioural data: purchasing patterns, supplier performance, settlement timings. How will your analytics feed this back into your system?
Embedded finance produces rich transaction data (via Stripe or similar) – integrate this with your ERP, compliance systems, and analytics.
Stablecoins bring ledger and blockchain‑based data: audit trails, token flows, redemption events. Use this for audits, ESG reporting (especially relevant in climate tech), vendor risk.
6. UX Design for Buyer‑Seller Agents
Design user interfaces where human buyers can delegate tasks to agents, set preferences, and override decisions.
Provide dashboards for sellers/vendors to interface with buyer agents, negotiate terms, receive payments (fiat or stablecoin), and view performance.
Ensure transparency and traceability of agent decisions, especially in B2B settings.
7. Market & Positioning Strategy
As a fintech or pro‑tech provider, position your platform as “agentic commerce‑enabled” — emphasise speed, automation, intelligence, settlement innovation.
Highlight your compliance readiness (embedded finance + regulated stablecoins) for prospective enterprise clients.
Use case stories: procurement in climate‑tech supply chain, global B2B services procurement, cross‑border marketplaces leveraging stablecoins.
Why Now? The Economic & Competitive Imperative
Buyer expectations are evolving: immediate settlement, minimal friction, intelligent matching rather than manual searching.
Supply‑chain and procurement functions in fintech/pro‑tech are looking to automate decision‑making and clearance flows. Agentic commerce responds to this.
Embedded finance and stablecoins are reducing the cost of capital, settlement delays, and foreign-exchange friction — meaning platforms that incorporate these features gain a competitive edge.
Regulatory clarity (in Singapore, Hong Kong) provides institutional comfort. Platforms that align early position themselves for growth as stablecoins proliferate.
Climate‑tech firms increasingly require trusted settlement, auditability, traceability — agentic commerce + stablecoins offer this.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q1. What is agentic commerce, and how is it different from e‑commerce or a digital marketplace?
A: Agentic commerce is the next evolution of commerce where intelligent software agents (driven by LLMs and AI orchestration) act on behalf of buyers (and/or sellers) to discover, negotiate, transact, and settle — rather than buyers manually browsing and transacting. It shifts from manual decision‑making to autonomous, delegated decision‑making.
Q2. How do stablecoins fit into agentic commerce?
A: Stablecoins act as the settlement layer that allows rapid, global, friction‑reduced transfer of value. When an agent makes a decision and initiates a transaction, a regulated stablecoin enables near‑instant settlement across borders or platforms with fewer intermediaries compared to traditional bank wires or card networks.
Q3. Why are Singapore and Hong Kong so relevant for stablecoin regulation?
A: Because they are major fintech hubs in Asia‑Pacific and have established (or are establishing) clear regulatory frameworks for fiat‑referenced stablecoins. In Singapore, the MAS Single‑Currency Stablecoin framework provides licensing, reserve, and redemption requirements. In Hong Kong, the Stablecoins Ordinance (effective Aug 1st , 2025) mandates licensing for issuers of fiat‑referenced stablecoins. This regulatory clarity gives businesses a credible environment for integrating stablecoins into commerce flows.
Q4. How does embedded finance, facilitated through platforms like Stripe, enable agentic commerce?
A: Embedded finance allows you to integrate financial services (payments, accounts, cards, lending) directly into your platform rather than relying on separate bank or gateway solutions. Stripe’s suite of embedded finance APIs lets you embed these services with minimal build time and robust compliance/fraud tools.
For agentic commerce platforms, it means the agent’s actions (e.g., negotiation, purchase) can be linked to payment/settlement logic immediately and securely.
Q5. What are the key risks fintech and pro‑tech firms need to consider when embracing agentic commerce?
A: The major risks include: agent decision errors (governance/oversight), fraud and payments risk (especially as transaction scales grow), settlement and stablecoin risk (reserve backing, redemption risk, regulatory uncertainty), compliance risk (KYC/AML, especially under new regimes), integration complexity (embedded finance, APIs), and data governance (agent logs, audit trails). Firms should have robust frameworks for control, monitoring, and fallback.
🛡️ The Security Mandate: Agentic AI & Embedded Finance
When your "customer" is a piece of code, your "fraud" threat is also a piece of code. How do you block a malicious "fraud-bot" without creating friction for a legitimate LLM-powered agent?
This is where traditional security falls short, and a new model is needed. The solution is Stripe's Embedded Finance suite, which bakes security and anti-fraud measures directly into the payment infrastructure.
This isn't just a payment gateway; it's an AI-powered security co-pilot for your platform.
Secure by Default (Tokenization): The new Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) and Shared Payment Tokens (SPTs), co-developed by Stripe and OpenAI, are a perfect example. A B2B agent never sees or handles your client's raw credit card or bank details. It only receives a secure, single-use, time-constrained token. This removes the risk from the agent itself.
Anti-Fraudulent by Design (AI-Powered Risk): This is where Stripe Radar becomes critical. Radar is an AI system trained on trillions of transactions across millions of companies. It is already an expert at distinguishing human fraud from legitimate human purchases. Now, this same engine is being trained to detect the new, subtle patterns of agentic fraud.
For B2B platforms, this is essential. By embedding Stripe, you inherit a global security network that actively learns to "red flag" a malicious script attempting to exploit your API, while "green-lighting" a trusted corporate agent executing a purchase.
The New B2B Mandate: From SEO to "Agent Optimization" (AO)
For the last two decades, your content strategy has been built around Search Engine Optimization (SEO)—making your website and whitepapers easy for a human to find.
The new mandate is Agent Optimization (AO).
Your future-state "customer" is an AI agent. This agent will not be impressed by your blog's layout. It will only ask three questions:
Is your service discoverable? Is your proprietary climate data or risk-scoring service exposed via a clean, well-documented API that an agent can query?
Is your service consumable? Can an agent understand your pricing (e.g., $0.001 per query), authenticate, and consume your service without human intervention?
Is your service "transactable" and trusted? Can your system programmatically and securely accept a payment (such as a MAS-regulated stablecoin), and can it demonstrate protection against automated fraud (via tools like Stripe Radar)?
If the answer to any of these is "no," your business will be invisible to the agentic economy.
How STB's Agentic AI Consulting Bridges the Gap
The transition to an agentic-first B2B world is not just a technical challenge; it's a fundamental strategy challenge.
This is where STB provides critical value to our FinTech and Climate Tech clients. We don't just write content; we help you architect your business for this new autonomous era.
Our Agentic AI Consulting focuses on the core pillars of B2B "Agent Optimization":
Data & IP Strategy: We help you identify and structure your core B2B assets (your data, your analytics, your services) so they can be packaged and understood by AI agents.
API-First Narrative: We work with your teams to build the content and documentation strategy that treats your API as your primary "product." This is the new storefront for B2B.
Agentic Security & Trust: We help you architect and communicate your trust layer, leveraging embedded finance and secure protocols so that partners and their agents know your platform is safe for autonomous transactions.
Market & Ecosystem Strategy: We help you craft B2B content that communicates your new "agent-readiness" and your alignment with new regulatory frameworks (such as MAS and HK) to build the essential trust layer with your partners.
The agentic era is here. The businesses that become the most trusted, discoverable, and consumable "nodes" in this new network will win the next decade of B2B.
Let’s build the Agentic Era together.
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