Axios Live: Stablecoins seen as "kind of a nothingburger" while agentic commerce soars

LAS VEGAS — Innovations in consumer transactions and how they are reshaping the future of finance drove the discussions at the Axios reception and throughout the week at this year's Money20/20 conference.

Why it matters: Legacy banks and startups are racing to implement emerging technologies like stablecoins and AI agents — with major implications for how people pay and shop.

• Axios' Lucinda Shen and Ryan Lawler spoke with Column CEO William Hockey and Mastercard co-president of global partnerships Sherri Haymond at the event, sponsored by J.P. Morgan.

What they're saying: "I think broadly, from a fintech and financial services perspective, we're still in a bit of a winter," Hockey said. "But I think what's happened is power is accumulating to the incumbents."

• Large companies are scaling in size and revenue, while it's more difficult for smaller, newer fintech startups to secure funding, he said.
• "AI has just completely taken over everything, and so from a funding mechanism, it's quite hard there."

State of play: Hockey thinks stablecoins will be an addition rather than a standalone product, and said they are "kind of a nothingburger" in U.S. domestic payments.

• "They're not really going to be effective," he said. "They're mostly right now in the cross-border international space, which we're quite strong at."
• There is a lot of movement in the stablecoin space, Hockey noted: "I think that will still play out. I think we're still in the early days. There's a lot of money to be made, but there's also a lot of companies, most of them aren't going to survive."

What we're watching: The agentic commerce hype cycle has yet to play out, and no one can predict whether AI agents making everyday consumer purchases will become commonplace.

• Instilling trust in an agent-led transaction is a crucial part of Mastercard's agentic commerce strategy, Haymond said. "That means we have to put a bunch of technology in place to make sure that we know that the agent is really the agent."

• This rollout is starting to happen now, she said: "I've been at Mastercard for 15 years. … I've never seen anything move this quickly ever in my life. … We're already seeing use cases come to life and scale."
• It will take some time for the whole financial ecosystem to "get wired up," she said. "I don't think it's going to be tomorrow … but I think it is happening very quickly."

Content from the sponsored segment:

In a View From the Top conversation, J.P. Morgan global co-head of payments Max Neukirchen spoke about how innovations in biometrics, agentic AI and stablecoins are transforming the financial industry.

• "AI is probably the biggest transforming force in payments right now … and I don't think it's all hype, it's really true," he said, explaining the many use cases across client-facing and customer-facing applications, agentic commerce and J.P. Morgan's internal operations.