Stripe’s 2026 announcements paint a vision of commerce where AI agents, programmable payments, and decentralized finance converge. The strongest version of this narrative is that Stripe is positioning itself as the backbone for an AI-driven economy, offering tools that reduce friction in agent-human transactions, automate fraud detection, and enable real-time financial workflows. The emphasis on "agentic commerce" and machine-to-machine payments suggests a bet that AI will soon mediate a signifi...