More or Less · Topics · Episode #159
Agentic Commerce Doesn't Exist Yet — and Won't for Years, Says Dave
Clip from the full recording, 48:44–50:28 · download mp4 · watch at this point on YouTube
Despite a year of hype about AI agents spending money on your behalf, Dave argues agentic commerce is nowhere close to real: agents have no identity, no wallets, and the trust infrastructure took a decade to build even for humans.
Dave interrupts the Stripe conversation with a flat correction to the prevailing narrative: agentic commerce — AI agents autonomously spending money on the internet — is not even remotely a thing yet, and won’t be for a couple of years at least. Agents today spend money on tokens and essentially nothing else. Jess pushes on why, noting that agentic shopping was a huge pillar of OpenAI’s consumer business plans just twelve months ago and seems to have quietly fizzled.
Dave’s answer draws a direct historical parallel to the early internet: in the late 90s and early 2000s, people simply didn’t trust logging into banking sites or paying for anything online, and it took years of new standards and infrastructure to fix that. He recalls building Path in the early iOS era, when the App Store couldn’t process subscription payments for anything but games — pure platform immaturity. Agents today have the same gaps: no solid identity, no wallets, no ability to reliably act on a person’s behalf. It’s real, necessary work that Dave believes will take years, not months, to solve — but whenever it does land, he thinks it will be enormous, and a potentially huge future driver for Stripe specifically.
Key points
- Dave: agentic commerce is "not even remotely a thing yet" — agents spend money on tokens and essentially nothing else today.
- Jess notes agentic shopping was central to OpenAI's consumer business plans a year ago and appears to have fizzled since.
- Dave's historical parallel: early-2000s online payments and early-iOS App Store subscription limits both took years of infrastructure work to fix.
- Current gaps for agents: no solid identity, no wallets, no reliable way to act financially on a person's behalf.
- Dave's timeline: real agentic commerce is likely years away, not around the corner.
- Dave frames it as a potentially enormous future driver for Stripe specifically, once the infrastructure exists.
Where they landed
Quotes
“Agents are not spending money in any meaningful way on the internet yet, other than for tokens. Agentic commerce does not exist yet.”— Dave
“Why doesn't it exist yet? Because ChatGPT — I mean, it was a huge part of OpenAI's consumer business plans twelve months ago. Seems to have fizzled.”— Jess
“Agents are not good at acting on behalf of people. Agents don't have solid identity, agents don't have wallets. It's just work to be done that will take many years.”— Dave
Suggested tweets
"Agentic commerce does not exist yet." Dave Morin pumps the brakes on a year of hype about AI agents autonomously spending your money
Tweet this →OpenAI's agentic shopping plans from twelve months ago have quietly fizzled, Jess Lessin points out. Dave Morin's answer: agents still have no identity and no wallets
Tweet this →Dave Morin's early-internet parallel: it took years before anyone trusted paying online. Agentic commerce, he says, is stuck at that same starting line
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