B2B payments platform Pliant is positioning itself to capitalize on agentic commerce and increased token spending after entering the U.S. market through a partnership with Coastal Financial. 

The Berlin-based Visa partner, which teamed with sponsor bank Coastal on July 14 to go live in the U.S., is working to build trust with businesses and financial institutions as B2B payments become more automated by AI agents, Chief Executive Malte Rau told FinAi News.  

A sponsor bank enables a fintech to offer regulated banking services.  

“The conversation around agentic AI has largely focused on how AI will make purchasing decisions,” Rau said. “We think the more important question is how businesses safely authorize AI to spend on their behalf.”

As commercial payments evolve, providing an “infrastructure that combines automation with programmable controls, transparency and oversight” will be crucial, he said.  

Visa’s agentic commerce initiatives also are poised to accelerate adoption in the B2B space, Rau said, noting that Visa’s agentic AI deployments signal “market maturity.” 

Visa, the San Francisco-based payments network, expects increased “digitization of B2B payments” by removing friction through AI agents, CEO Ryan McInerney said during its fiscal second-quarter earnings call.  

Agents, McInerney said, “will be able to automate payment initiation directly from invoices and contracts and manage approvals autonomously.”  

B2B versus B2C

For B2B transactions, building an infrastructure that supports “agentic workflows” is just as important— if not more important — than the payment itself, Rau said.  

That’s because B2B payments involve more complexity tied to invoice collection, accounts payable and other processes, whereas consumer purchases are more straightforward, he added. 

“There’s a lot of approval processes happening before [the payment in B2B] and this is also something that can be handled by an agent,” Rau said. “Does the invoice match what I ordered? Is the address correct from the person I procured it from? The flow of the payment is just different.”

FIs and businesses can use Pliant’s card-as-a-service platform for customizable credit card programs, spend and expense management tools, data analytics and accounting automation, according to the company. 

AI powering growth 

Beyond agentic payments, AI is a key part of Pliant’s U.S. growth strategy as it uses the tech for compliance monitoring, client onboarding, product development and customer service, Rau said. 

The fintech also stands to benefit from “skyrocketing” card spending on AI tokens, translating to “pure revenue” for the company due to the sheer volume of transactions in this emerging segment, he said.

Token spending for enterprise LLMs tripled in 2025, according to research and consulting firm McKinsey & Co.  

Partnering with innovative companies such as Visa and Coastal also is a catalyst for growth, Rau said.

For example, Visa partnered with OpenAI last month to build an infrastructure that supports responsible agentic commerce at scale, according to a Visa release.

Agentic payments are expected to account for $190 billion to $385 billion, or 10% to 20%, of e-commerce spending in the United States by 2030, according to investment bank Morgan Stanley‘s December 2025 report.  

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