Natural secures $30mn Series A for AI agent payments infrastructure
The US fintech has now raised more than $40mn as it builds wallets, payments tools and credit products for AI agents.
By Rafael Ortiz · Fintech Correspondent
· 3 min read
Natural, a US fintech developing payments infrastructure for AI agents, has raised $30mn in a Series A financing round led by Forerunner’s Kirsten Green. The one-year-old company has now secured more than $40mn from backers as investors fund tools intended to let software agents hold, move and collect money.
The financing brings additional capital to a young segment of fintech focused on agentic commerce, where AI systems may act on behalf of users or businesses in payment flows. Natural is positioning its platform around the controls, accounts and rails needed for those agents to transact within financial and compliance frameworks.
According to Finextra, Natural’s investor base includes Forerunner, Human Capital, Abstract, Bridge, Brex, Mercury, Privy, Vercel, Notion, Increase, Unit and Figure. The company is building a suite of 13 products, six of which are already available.
Those existing products include wallets for agents, vaults for accounts, payment tools for transactions involving agents, funds transfer capabilities and marketplace infrastructure. In practice, these components are designed to give an AI agent a financial identity or account structure, connect that structure to payment movement, and support transactions in commercial environments such as platforms or marketplaces.
Product rollout
Natural also plans to release three products called Voice, Accept and Cards in the coming months, Finextra reported. Voice is intended to let agents collect payment card industry, or PCI, information over the phone, including card details. PCI rules govern how payment card data is handled, so voice-based collection would place an AI agent inside a process that has traditionally required tight data-security controls.
Accept is designed to let businesses make agents operate as merchants, according to Finextra. That would allow an agent to receive payments in a merchant-like capacity, subject to the infrastructure and controls supplied by Natural. Cards will let companies issue debit and charge cards for agents, extending agent activity into card-based payments.
The company has also set out a fourth-quarter product slate that includes Charge, Credit, Direct and Billing. Charge will enable per-API-call billing through Natural wallets, meaning usage of software interfaces could be priced and settled at the level of individual calls. Credit will let companies issue credit lines for agents.
Direct will allow agents to select and call specific payment rails while operating, according to Finextra. Billing is aimed at success-based charging for agent activity, linking payment to outcomes rather than only to usage or subscription terms.
Kahlil Lalji, Natural’s chief executive and co-founder, said agents are likely to become among the most important financial actors in the global economy. He said the central issue is which infrastructure providers will make agent-led payments “safe, reliable, compliant, and useful at scale”, adding that Natural is building that infrastructure.
The funding round comes as financial technology companies test how AI agents can be connected to regulated payments without weakening safeguards around identity, data handling, merchant acceptance and credit exposure. Natural has not disclosed valuation details in the information reported by Finextra.
This story draws on original reporting from Finextra Research.
