Virtual cards vs stablecoins for agent commerce

Welcome back to Not Fintech Investment Advice, where Simon Taylor and I do what we do best: talk about fintech startups we’re absolutely not giving investment advice on.

First up is Rhythmic, stablecoin-powered embedded wallets for brands (think Ansa but stablecoins). We unpack why payments nerds are now building in stablecoins, what OCC guidance means for yield on stored balances, and why this may be one of the clearest domestic stablecoin use cases yet.

Next up is AgentCard, prepaid virtual cards for AI agents. Simon's framing: if Stripe was built for developers, AgentCard is built for agents. We talk about what it means to build for agents as customers, and whether virtual cards are already good enough for a large share of agentic commerce.

Then there’s Rowspace, which uses AI to codify institutional knowledge for bespoke risk decisions inside private credit and private equity firms. The pitch is a virtual partner sitting on a junior analyst's shoulder, guiding deal decisions in real time. But when AI starts nudging high-stakes decisions, how do you know when it’s wrong? Could this become the Harvey of financial services? And will firms trust an outsider to live inside their secret sauce?

Finally, we close with Burst, an API layer for HSA and FSA reimbursement. Simon's analogy: if Honey and Plaid had a healthcare baby, it would be Burst. We discuss why FSA dollars usually sit there unspent, why the merchant integration is the piece nobody else has cracked, and how consumer permissioning can retrain people to think of that money as theirs.

Plus, Simon's manifestation to the universe: simplicity. You've got a new customer. Are you building for them?

This episode is brought to you by Plaid. 

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Follow Simon:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sytaylor/

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Follow Alex: 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson

Companies featured:

https://rhythmic.io/

https://agentcard.sh/

https://www.rowspace.ai/

https://getburst.com/