Stripe is making moves to dominate every layer of payments, from a potential PayPal acquisition to AI billing tools and stablecoin infrastructure.
Stripe processed $1.9T in volume, its new AI billing tool tracks LLM usage in real time, and its x402 integration lets AI agents send and receive stablecoin payments autonomously.
At a time when payment winners must command either infrastructure or interface, PayPal is awkwardly positioned between the two.
The questions now are: Where does PayPal sit in the payments ecosystem, and does that position still matter? What unique role does it play in a stack that increasingly bypasses middle layers?
Legacy treasury systems force companies to manage dozens of accounts manually. Virtual account management offers a modern fix without replacing core infrastructure.
KeyBank's Bennie Pennington and Qolo's Patricia Montesi discuss building a real-time VAM platform together, processing $40B+ in transactions.
