Maria Palma

Roadblock Title:

Learn how to power agentic payments with FIAT, crypto, and compliant infrastructure

Time:

Wednesday - 2:00 PM (Tower C)

Abstract:

Agents are coming faster…and already here. But they won’t truly have the impact we all know they can unless they can utilize money. For anyone who has spent time deeply in payment systems and AI capabilities, it’s glaringly obvious that there is a need for different infrastructure for AI agents as agentic capabilities take off. In most cases, if a system is acting as you (like in your Doordash or Seamless app), it can pay with your card on file. However, in any case where it has to go to the internet and do something on your behalf (like buy a flight or book something for your kids), or in most B2B cases, you will need to make payments. This session explores why agent-based payments differ from today’s typical online payments. It covers navigating LLMs that are probabilistic versus deterministic in nature and how to authorize KYC for a good bot when the financial systems have been set up for bad bots.

Bio:

Maria Palma is a General Partner at Freestyle Capital. Prior to Freestyle, she was a General Partner at Kindred Capital, a seed and early-stage venture firm focusing on European technology companies. Prior to Kindred, Maria was a Principal at RRE Ventures in New York where she spent time on the investment side, and also built out their platform efforts. Maria has invested in companies such as Fung Money, Lovable, Lightning Labs, Moov & Payman. Before venture, Maria was the Chief of Staff and Executive Director of Business Development for a NY-based startup, Eyeview, as they scaled from zero to $40M in revenue. Maria began her career at General Electric in Operations Management & Supply Chain. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS in Industrial Engineering from UW-Madison.