Natural Raises $30M for AI Agent Payments, Rivaling Stripe

Fintech startup Natural secured a $30 million Series A funding round today to build the first native payment infrastructure designed specifically for autonomous AI agents, positioning the company to directly challenge industry giant Stripe.

Why Traditional Payment Rails Fail AI Agents

While modern AI agents are increasingly capable of executing complex workflows—such as sourcing freight vendors, comparing market prices, and coordinating logistics via chat—they inevitably hit a wall when it is time to pay. At the transaction stage, these autonomous systems still require human intervention to complete the transfer of funds.

This limitation exists because today’s global financial rails were engineered exclusively for human-initiated transactions. Standard payment protocols like credit cards and ACH networks require manual authorization and security checks. For autonomous AI agents designed to operate continuously and at scale, these legacy systems introduce friction that completely halts their workflow.

Natural’s Bold Plan to Rebuild Financial Infrastructure

Recognizing this fundamental bottleneck, Natural is redesigning the financial system from the ground up. Founded in 2025, the startup aims to establish a new transactional standard optimized for machine-to-machine and machine-to-human commerce.

The concept took shape about a year ago when Natural co-founder and CEO Kahlil Lalji observed that agentic AI capabilities were rapidly outpacing the financial infrastructure needed to support them. Existing banking systems simply could not handle tasks like autonomous vendor payments, automated collections, or direct agent-to-agent transactions.

Lalji, a veteran of the fintech space, previously co-founded Ivella, a YC-backed banking platform for couples that was acquired by Earnin in 2023. Following a two-year stint as an engineer at Earnin, Lalji was initially hesitant to return to the highly regulated financial sector after navigating the turbulent end of the Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP) era. However, the sheer scale of the opportunity proved impossible to ignore, leading him to conclude that agentic payments would become the most critical infrastructure challenge of the AI era.

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An Orchestration Layer for Autonomous Commerce

To bring this vision to life, Lalji partnered with his former Ivella co-founder Eric Wang and Walt Leung, a former engineering manager at Nextdoor, to launch Natural. The platform operates as an agent orchestration layer, enabling AI agents to securely store, route, and deploy capital. By integrating Natural’s API, enterprises can empower their AI agents to autonomously execute payments, collect incoming revenue, and conduct transactions with both human users and other AI systems.

Securing $30M to Challenge Stripe

Natural’s ambitious blueprint caught the attention of Kirsten Green, founder and managing partner at Forerunner. The consumer- and commerce-focused venture firm led the $30 million Series A round, bringing Natural’s total funding to $40 million.

Forerunner’s investment was driven by Natural’s comprehensive approach. Rather than merely building a checkout tool for AI-assisted consumer shopping, the startup is reinventing the core payment infrastructure, including the complex backend processes required to handle disputed transactions autonomously.

While Natural has operated quietly in beta, Lalji notes that the team has finalized key architectural decisions that position the startup to compete directly with Stripe. The legacy payment giant is also actively working to adapt its own rails for the AI economy.

Natural aims to leverage its agility and speed to outpace established incumbents. The startup’s mission has already attracted top-tier engineering and product talent from fintech leaders like Stripe, Ramp, and Square.

The Future of Computer-Speed Transactions

The race to build the financial backbone for AI is intensifying. Competitors like the DCVC-backed Skyfire Systems are focusing heavily on utilizing USD-backed stablecoins to facilitate instant machine payments. Natural plan to support stablecoins within its ecosystem, but the company is also building deep compatibility with traditional bank payments to ensure broad enterprise adoption.

Despite the growing competition, Natural is banking on an exponential expansion of the overall market. Because AI agents can transact at computer speed rather than human speed, the volume of global transactions is projected to scale dramatically, potentially increasing by several orders of magnitude beyond current levels.