Episode Summary
What if the next big unlock in payments wasn’t just faster checkouts, but bots buying on our behalf? In this episode of In the Blink of AI, Georgie Healy sits down with Karl Durrance, Managing Director for Australia and New Zealand at Stripe, to explore how AI is reshaping money movement at a global scale.
Karl reveals how Stripe is tackling fraud versus scams (and why scams are now the bigger threat), why AI startups are hitting revenue milestones at unprecedented speed, and what agentic commerce could mean for the way we shop. From buy now pay later’s misunderstood role in credit to why stablecoins may be the real future of internet-native money, Karl shares candid insights on where payments are heading next.
You’ll also hear why global expansion no longer requires a move to San Francisco, how single-use virtual cards could make agentic commerce safe, and why bots might soon handle life’s least joyful purchases, freeing us up for the ones that matter.
Time Stamps
02:18 – Karl’s role at Stripe and the $1.4T payments scale
05:51 – Startups hitting $5M ARR in under a year
06:57 – AI Hacks: family holiday planning & cutting through bureaucracy
12:34 – Do Australian founders really need to move to SF?
17:39 – Explaining agentic commerce (AI buying for you)
20:34 – Shopping bots, travel assistants, and Amazon’s “Buy for Me”
22:25 – How Stripe protects against rogue AI agents
25:14 – Ticket scalpers, bots, and the arms race of fraud prevention
27:01 – Fraud vs. scams: what’s really costing the economy
31:51 – Why slowing payments down can actually prevent scams
37:21 – Spicy takes: BNPL, crypto & stablecoins
40:43 – BNPL vs. credit card debt — Karl’s contrarian view
41:24 – Stablecoins: solving volatility and internet money movement
45:51 – When stablecoins meet agentic commerce (next 5 years?)
47:41 – Stripe’s Sydney Tour: launches, thought leaders & what’s next
Resources
🦘 Stripe Tour Sydney: https://tour.stripeevent.com/sydney?rshow=sydney
🙋🏻♂️ Karl Durrance: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karldurrance/
💳 Stripe: https://stripe.com/au
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