Paypal for agents: welcome to agentic commerce

AI agents can already write code, build websites, and manage workflows ... but they still can’t pay for anything on their own. That bottleneck is about to disappear.

In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we sit down with Jim Nguyen, former PayPal exec and cofounder/CEO of InFlow, a new AI-native payments platform launching from stealth. InFlow wants to give AI agents the ability to onboard, pay, and get paid inside the flow of work, without redirects, forms, or a human typing in credit card numbers.

We talk about:

• Why payments — not intelligence — are the missing link for AI agents

• How agents become a new kind of customer

• What guardrails and policies keep agents from spending all your money

• Why enterprises will need HR for agents, budgets for agents, and compliance systems for agents

• The future of agent marketplaces, headless ecommerce, and machine-speed commerce

• How InFlow plans to become the PayPal of agentic systems

If AI agents eventually hire, fire, transact, and manage entire workflows, someone has to give them wallets. This episode explores who does it, how it works, and what it means for the economy.

👀 Full episode transcript + articles at: https://johnkoetsier.com

🔎 Deeper insight in my Substack at techfirst.substack.com

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00:00 — AI agents can’t pay yet

01:00 — Why agents need financial capabilities

02:45 — Developers as the first use case

04:15 — Agents that build AND provision software

06:00 — Agents as real customers with budgets

07:30 — Payments infrastructure is the missing layer

09:00 — Machine-speed commerce and GPU allocation

10:15 — From RubyCoins to PayPal to agentic payments

12:00 — Policy guardrails: the child debit card analogy

14:00 — Accountability: every agent must be “sponsored”

15:00 — HR, finance, and compliance systems for agents

16:45 — Agent marketplaces and future gig platforms

18:15 — Headless commerce: ghost kitchens for AI agents

20:00 — Agents are the new apps

21:15 — Amazon pushback and optimizing for revenue

22:45 — Why agent-optimized platforms will emerge

23:30 — Voice commerce, invisible ordering, and wallets

24:15 — Final thoughts: building the rails for agent commerce