Meta Data Chief Says Stablecoins Are Assumed in the Future of Agentic Commerce

What to Know

• Meta Chief Data Officer Alex Schultz said agentic commerce could become the next tier of business for the entire company.
• Schultz said Meta has over a million weekly active businesses using Meta agents, up from basically nothing at the start of the year.
• He framed stablecoins as a major part of the payments layer for conversational and agent-driven commerce.
• Schultz pointed to WeChat and Line as examples of large-scale in-app commerce and digital peer-to-peer payment ecosystems.
• In Brazil and India, Schultz said Meta has more than a million small businesses doing commerce through conversations on WhatsApp.
• Fortune Business Insights predicts conversational commerce will grow to $39.53 billion by 2034, largely driven by AI.
• Meta’s failed Libra and Diem effort remains a key backdrop, but Schultz described the company’s future approach as partnership-led rather than centered on a proprietary currency.
• Schultz said decentralized verification would be highly useful for Meta, but no system has yet reached the scale, reliability, or mainstream penetration required.

Meta’s Commerce Vision Moves Toward AI Agents

Meta’s push into agentic commerce is moving from experimentation toward a broader strategic vision, with Chief Data Officer Alex Schultz describing business agents as a potential foundation for the company’s next phase. In remarks that put artificial intelligence, messaging, digital payments, and identity verification into one commercial framework, Schultz said agentic commerce may become the next tier of business for Meta as more companies begin using AI systems to interact with customers, coordinate logistics, and eventually complete transactions.

The core idea is straightforward but potentially far-reaching: software agents could act on behalf of businesses and consumers inside everyday messaging environments. Instead of a person manually searching, comparing, scheduling, negotiating, and paying, an agent could handle many of those steps in conversation. For Meta, the natural surface for that activity is WhatsApp, where business communication is already deeply embedded in several major markets.

Schultz said Meta is building business agents for all businesses and has over a million weekly active businesses using Meta agents, rising from basically nothing at the start of the year. That figure indicates rapid early adoption, particularly for tools that can respond to customers, organize inquiries, and help businesses operate in conversation rather than through traditional websites or standalone apps.

Why Mundane Tasks Matter for Bigger Commerce

Schultz used a deliberately ordinary example to explain the agentic economy: coordinating a child’s birthday party. In that scenario, agents could check calendars, find available venues, book times, communicate with other parents’ agents, and manage the back-and-forth through WhatsApp. The example is simple, but the commercial logic is significant. If agents can manage low-risk personal logistics, market participants can imagine similar systems handling more complex commercial workflows.

Those workflows could include supply chain coordination, inventory discussions, appointment booking, customer service, merchant discovery, cross-border sales, and settlement. In the long run, the value of agentic commerce may come less from one dramatic use case and more from the quiet automation of countless small tasks that currently require human attention. For businesses, especially small merchants, that could mean more responsiveness without adding staff. For consumers, it could mean less friction in routine purchases and service arrangements.

That is where payments become critical. An agentic commerce system cannot function at full scale if the payment layer remains fragmented, slow, expensive, or dependent on manual checkout flows. Schultz’s comments point to stablecoins as one possible settlement layer beneath the conversational interface, particularly in markets where cross-border payments, merchant acceptance, and platform-native transactions remain difficult.

Stablecoins Sit at the Center of the Payments Layer

Schultz said Meta completely believes in a future with no physical wallets, with digital payments becoming the whole future. He described stablecoins as a big part of the solution, placing them inside a broader shift toward conversational commerce and app-based settlement. In this framing, stablecoins are not presented as a speculative trading instrument, but as infrastructure that could help agents and businesses move value more efficiently inside digital networks.

Stablecoins are designed to track the value of a reference asset, commonly a major currency, and they are widely used in crypto markets for settlement, trading liquidity, and transfers. For large technology platforms, their appeal is tied to programmability, speed, and the possibility of embedding payments inside software flows. For users, the promise is a transaction experience that feels less like navigating banking rails and more like sending a message.

Schultz pointed to WeChat’s red envelope model and Line’s commerce infrastructure in Japan, Thailand, and Taiwan as evidence that conversational commerce at scale is already real. Both WeChat and Line have played prominent roles in digital peer-to-peer payments and in-app commerce across Asia. The implication is that the United States is not necessarily leading the future of digital commerce, even if American consumers are comfortable with tap-to-pay transactions in stores.

WhatsApp Commerce Highlights the Global Divide

Schultz criticized the United States’ reliance on iMessage, calling it a backward approach compared with richer commerce experiences available in other messaging ecosystems. His critique centered on functionality: in many markets, messaging apps are not just places to chat, but places where consumers discover merchants, ask questions, receive recommendations, interact with creators, and complete purchases.

In Brazil and India, Schultz said Meta has more than a million small businesses doing commerce in conversation on WhatsApp. That adoption matters because it shows the agentic commerce opportunity is not limited to large brands with advanced technical teams. Small businesses may be among the biggest beneficiaries if AI agents can help them respond faster, qualify buyers, manage bookings, and accept payments in the same channel where customer relationships already exist.

Conversational commerce also fits with the rise of trusted creators and influencers, who can direct consumer attention toward merchants and products inside social and messaging environments. Fortune Business Insights predicts the conversational commerce market will grow to $39.53 billion by 2034, largely driven by AI. While that forecast is not a guarantee, it reflects growing expectations that shopping, service, communication, and payment will continue merging inside chat-based interfaces.

Libra’s Shadow Shapes Meta’s New Approach

Meta’s renewed interest in digital payments inevitably carries the legacy of Libra, the company’s previous attempt to launch a global stablecoin project. Schultz addressed that history with a dry acknowledgment that Meta may have said things that annoyed some governments. The comment reflects how controversial Libra became after its announcement, as policymakers and regulators raised concerns about financial stability, privacy, monetary sovereignty, and Meta’s possible influence over the global payments system.

Libra was later rebranded as Diem before being abandoned in 2022 under sustained regulatory pressure. That history appears to have shaped Meta’s current posture. Rather than emphasizing a proprietary currency, Schultz described Meta as a partnership company in these areas. The strategic distinction is important: Meta may seek to control the interface, distribution, and user experience, while relying on regulated third-party stablecoins or payment partners for settlement beneath the surface.

This partnership-led model could reduce political and regulatory friction compared with issuing a Meta-controlled currency. It also aligns with the role Meta already plays across its platforms: connecting people, merchants, creators, and advertisers through high-volume communication surfaces. If stablecoin rails are integrated through partners, Meta could potentially enable faster or more flexible payments without reviving the same level of concern that surrounded Libra.

Decentralized Identity Remains a Missing Piece

Beyond payments, Schultz highlighted verification as a central challenge for the agentic economy. If a user is going to transact with an agent, the user needs confidence that the agent truly represents the business it claims to represent. The same issue applies in reverse: businesses need to know whether customers, vendors, and counterparties are legitimate. Without trusted identity and authorization, agentic commerce could become vulnerable to impersonation, fraud, and abuse.

Schultz said decentralization would be extremely useful if verification could be taken outside Meta’s own systems. He said it would be incredible if a decentralized service existed that Meta could simply plug into. That statement is notable because it suggests Meta sees value in external identity infrastructure, particularly if it can solve trust problems across platforms rather than inside a single closed ecosystem.

At the same time, Schultz said Meta has not gone all-in because no decentralized system has yet achieved the scale, reliability, or mainstream penetration required. That is a cautious but important qualification. Decentralized identity and proof-of-humanity systems have attracted significant attention across crypto and technology circles, but mass adoption remains difficult. For a company operating at Meta’s scale, an identity layer must work reliably for mainstream users, not only for early adopters.

What It Means for Crypto and Commerce

For the crypto sector, Schultz’s comments reinforce the idea that stablecoins may be one of the most commercially relevant parts of blockchain-based finance. While volatile crypto assets often dominate headlines, stablecoins are increasingly discussed as payment infrastructure, settlement rails, and programmable money for digital platforms. If agentic commerce expands, the demand for fast and interoperable settlement could place stablecoins closer to mainstream consumer and merchant activity.

Still, several conditions would need to align. Regulators must remain comfortable with stablecoin integration. Payment partners must offer compliance, reliability, and consumer protections. Users must trust AI agents with increasingly sensitive tasks. Businesses must see clear value in adopting agent tools. Identity systems must prevent impersonation and fraud. None of those challenges are trivial, especially when commerce moves across borders and across different legal systems.

For Meta, the opportunity is to make messaging the interface for a more automated commercial internet. The company does not need every payment or verification layer to be proprietary if it can remain the place where customers and businesses interact. Schultz’s comments suggest that inside Meta, stablecoins, agentic payments, and decentralized verification are no longer remote concepts. They are being treated as practical components of a commerce system that is already emerging, even if unevenly distributed around the world.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is agentic commerce?

Agentic commerce refers to transactions and commercial tasks handled partly or fully by AI agents. These agents can communicate, schedule, compare options, coordinate with other agents, and potentially help complete payments on behalf of users or businesses.

Why is Meta interested in agentic commerce?

Meta operates major messaging and social platforms where businesses already communicate with customers. If commerce increasingly happens through conversations, Meta can provide the interface where AI agents, merchants, consumers, and payment systems meet.

How do stablecoins fit into Meta’s vision?

Schultz described stablecoins as a major part of the digital payments solution. In an agentic commerce model, stablecoins could potentially serve as settlement rails beneath chat-based interactions and automated commercial workflows.

Is Meta launching its own stablecoin again?

Schultz framed Meta’s approach as partnership-oriented rather than centered on a proprietary currency. That suggests the company may prefer working with regulated payment and stablecoin partners instead of reviving a Libra-style project.

What happened to Libra and Diem?

Libra was Meta’s earlier global stablecoin project, later renamed Diem. It faced sustained regulatory pressure over financial stability, privacy, and Meta’s role in payments, and the project was abandoned in 2022.

Why did Schultz mention WeChat and Line?

He used WeChat and Line as examples of messaging platforms that already support digital payments and in-app commerce at scale. These ecosystems show that conversational commerce is not just theoretical in major Asian markets.

Why is WhatsApp important to this strategy?

WhatsApp is already a major business communication channel in markets such as Brazil and India. Schultz said Meta has more than a million small businesses doing commerce in conversation on WhatsApp in those countries.

What role could decentralized identity play?

Decentralized identity could help users verify that an AI agent truly represents the business it claims to represent. Schultz said such a system would be highly useful, but no solution has yet reached the necessary scale and reliability.

Is agentic commerce already mainstream?

Not yet. Schultz framed the agentic economy as already present but unevenly distributed, with adoption growing in some areas while key infrastructure such as trusted verification and payment integration continues to develop.

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