A new startup, Lava Payments, aims to take on payment giants by building a solution for the modern web where AI agents now handle transactions for their customers. The idea came to founder Mitchell Jones after he left his earlier Y Combinator-backed fintech startup, Lendtable, as he began to experiment with AI.
He saw the potential to build out a system that would make using AI and agent payments simpler and more developer-friendly. While experimenting with an AI app and trying to build what he thought was something simple, he realized he quickly spent more than $400 trying to build a basic form-filling agent.
“I kept running into the same issue,” he told TechCrunch. “I was using the same underlying models and tools again and again, but through different wrappers or platforms.” And each time, he had to start a new subscription, re-authenticate, and pay separately, “even though I was already paying for access to the core model.”
“That felt fundamentally broken,” he continued. “I didn’t want to keep rebuying access to the same thing under a different wrapper. What I wanted was a single wallet, one set of credits, and the ability to move between otols and providers without starting over every time so I could pay for what I was using.”
He decided to launch Lava Payments as a solution.
Lava is a digital wallet that lets merchants use usage credits to facilitate transactions. The idea is that one set of credits working across merchants and services makes it easier for autonomous agents to make payments without needing human intervention. It works like this: A merchant can enable the Lava wallet for their customers to use and upload (credits) money to. Once a customer does that, they can take that money and use it at any merchant that also accepts Lava and any o …