Agents will move from vision to buildable infrastructure
DeWitt's framework cuts through agent commerce hype with engineering reality—acknowledging current limitations while mapping concrete preparation steps for teams building toward programmatic customer transactions.
The agent commerce conversation runs heavy on vision and light on working systems, so Craig DeWitt's Forbes breakdown offers something different. He acknowledges what others gloss over: agents still can't buy things online reliably. The infrastructure for tokenized identity and payments is emerging, not established.
DeWitt lays out a five-step preparation framework that focuses on what's actually buildable. Instead of asking "how do I block bots?" the question becomes "how do I accept verified agents as paying customers?" That shift changes the whole technical problem. His work building payment systems at Ripple—handling billions in transaction volume—shows in the specifics: tokenized identity tokens, programmatic checkout APIs, hybrid web/API approaches that work with existing infrastructure.
For product teams, there's a practical middle path here. You're not betting your roadmap on immature technology, but you're positioning for a customer category that will eventually transact in volume. The verification and payment protocols he describes solve real problems that human-designed interfaces create for programmatic access.
Most agent commerce writing feels speculative. DeWitt's piece reads like engineering documentation for something you could start building next quarter, even if the full ecosystem takes years to mature.
Craig DeWitt
