Alex Schultz, Meta's chief data officer, described agentic commerce as a core future direction for the company during a CoinDesk Spotlight conversation. He highlighted rapid growth in business agents and the role of stablecoins in payments. Schultz also noted the potential of decentralized systems for verification.
Schultz stated that Meta is building business agents for all businesses and now has over a million weekly active businesses using Meta agents. He outlined everyday uses such as agents coordinating a child's birthday party by booking venues and communicating on WhatsApp, saying the model could scale to larger transactions.
On payments, Schultz predicted the end of physical wallets and emphasized stablecoins as a key part of digital commerce. He pointed to examples like WeChat in Asia and criticized iMessage as limited compared to WhatsApp's capabilities in Brazil and India.
Schultz acknowledged Meta's past Libra project, noting the company now favors partnerships over issuing its own currency. He expressed interest in decentralized verification systems, calling them potentially useful if they achieve scale and reliability.
