Natural challenges Stripe with $30 million for AI payments

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Key Takeaways

1Natural has raised $30 million to transform autonomous payments for AI agents, challenging Stripe.

2The startup aims to create a payment infrastructure tailored for transactions initiated by AI agents, without human intervention.

3Kirsten Green from Forerunner led the funding, drawn by Natural's vision to reinvent payments.

💡Why it matters — Natural could disrupt the payments industry by automating AI transactions, thereby increasing their volume and speed.

Natural and the Evolution of Payments for AI Agents

Artificial intelligence (AI) agents are transforming the way complex tasks are executed, from identifying suppliers to negotiating prices and organizing deliveries. However, one obstacle remains: payment. Currently, human intervention is still necessary to finalize a transaction, which hinders the complete autonomy of these agents.

In the financial world, transactions rely on infrastructures known as financial rails. These systems, designed for human transactions, are not suited for AI agents that require total autonomy. Traditional payment methods, such as credit cards and ACH transfers, require human authorization, thus slowing down the processes that these agents could perform independently.

Natural: A New Approach to Autonomous Payments

In response to this challenge, the startup Natural aims to reinvent the payment system from the ground up. It recently raised $30 million to develop a solution that could compete with giants like Stripe. This funding round marks the beginning of an ambitious journey to transform the payment landscape.

Natural's co-founder and CEO, Kahlil Lalji, identified a gap in the current financial architecture, which is unable to support autonomous payments for AI agents. After selling his previous startup, Ivella, to Earnin in 2023, Lalji worked as an engineer at Earnin for two years. He became disillusioned with the financial sector after the end of the zero-interest-rate policy era, but the opportunity to revolutionize autonomous payments proved irresistible.

An Experienced Team with a Bold Vision

Lalji teamed up with Eric Wang, his former partner at Ivella, and Walt Leung, a former technical executive at Nextdoor, to found Natural in 2025. Natural positions itself as an orchestration layer for agents that enables AI agents to move and store funds. Their goal is to create an infrastructure that allows AI agents to manage funds autonomously, thereby facilitating transactions between agents and with humans.

Interest in Natural has been bolstered by Kirsten Green, founder of the venture capital firm Forerunner, who led the $30 million Series A funding round, bringing the company's total funding to $40 million. Green, whose firm focuses on consumer experiences and the future of commerce, is convinced of Natural's ability to transform not only payments but also the entire transactional infrastructure, including dispute management.

A Growing Market

Although Natural has operated in beta so far, Lalji is confident in the startup's architectural choices, which give it a "good chance" of competing with established players like Stripe. The goal is to rapidly develop a payment infrastructure that becomes essential for AI agents, thereby attracting talent from major fintech companies like Stripe, Ramp, and Square.

Natural views Stripe as its main competitor, but it is not alone in this race. Startups like Skyfire Systems, backed by DCVC, are also exploring innovative solutions for AI payments, including the use of dollar-backed stablecoins. Natural plans to integrate these digital currencies while maintaining support for traditional bank payments.

Towards a Transaction Revolution

Lalji anticipates a massive increase in transaction volume if these can be executed at machine speed rather than human speed. According to him, the number of payments could multiply by several orders of magnitude, thereby transforming the financial sector and opening new opportunities for AI agents.