The Trusted Digital & Agentic Commerce Infrastructure

San Francisco, CA
Joined June 2018
Pinned Tweet
🎉 @getVGS just crossed 10 billion tokens stored. But the real story isn't the number, it's the curve. We now add more than 1 billion tokens to the vault every single month. In a new blog post, our CTO and Co-Founder, Marshall Jones, breaks down why this milestone matters far beyond the number itself. Agentic commerce is rewriting the payments stack, and it demands three things at once. VGS was built for exactly this moment. Read Marshall's full take on what this growth signals and what's coming next 👉verygoodsecurity.com/blog/po… #VGS #AgenticCommerce #Payments #Tokenization #AI #Fintech
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That’s a wrap! Thank you @LeadersPayments for hosting @getVGS EU team Paul Shum and Damijan Pezdiček in London this week! 🇬🇧 Looking forward to PLS in San Diego next month where we’ll be hosting a Payments Over Plates dinner! 😊 🔗 Sign up for the dinner: info.verygoodsecurity.com/pa… See you soon! #VGS #PaymentsOverPlates #payments #PLS
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💳 5 to 18% of recurring card payments fail every month, and stale card data is a big reason why. Our latest blog breaks down how card account updaters work and how they keep payments flowing. 🔄 In this blog, we cover 👇 🔍 How account updaters work behind the scenes 📊 Account updater programs compared 🔐 Account updater vs. network tokenization 🛠️ How to implement one in your payment stack Whether you run a subscription business or manage card-on-file payments, this is a must-read. 📖 Read the full blog here 👉 verygoodsecurity.com/blog/po… #CardAccountUpdater #AccountUpdater #Payments #CardOnFile #RecurringPayments #NetworkTokenization #VGS
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For @Forbes, Chuck Yu, VGS CEO, explains why this is an infrastructure race, not a product feature. Handing an AI agent a raw card number is risky, so the real question is whether a grant of authority matches a specific transaction. 🔐 The consumer-facing demos will keep getting flashier, but much of the economics will be decided one layer down, in how spending authority is represented, scoped, and trusted. 🧠 At @VGS, we are proud to power payment tokenization and agentic commerce for the world’s leading enterprises. 🌍 Read the full article 🔗 forbes.com/councils/forbeste… Thank you, Forbes, for the opportunity to share this perspective. #AgenticCommerce #Payments #AgenticPayments #Fintech #Tokenization #AI #VGS #Forbes
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We’re hiring an Application Security Engineer! 🛡️ @getVGS processes 10 billion+ monthly interactions and secures tokenized data touching a third of all e-commerce. At that volume and speed, security can’t be a roadblock - it has to be built directly into how engineers ship! We’re looking for an AppSec Engineer to partner closely with engineering: automating SAST/DAST guardrails in CI/CD, threat modeling distributed Java & Python services, and running our private bug bounty program. 📍Fully remote for US-based candidates outside the Bay Area. 🔗 Learn more & apply: jobs.lever.co/verygoodsecuri… #VGS #AppSec #DevSecOps #SecurityEngineering #Fintech
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Thank you to everyone who joined us for happy hour in the VGS Vault Lounge on Sunday! Always a pleasure to meet friends - both old and new - during the crazy week that is Money20/20! We're hosting round ✌ this evening from 4:30 - 7:30 pm. 🔗 RSVP here for more details: info.verygoodsecurity.com/va… #Money2020 #Money2020USA #VGS #PaymentsNerd #VGSvaultlounge #AgenticCommerce @getVGS @whartonfintech
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ICYMI, @camemanuelburns at @FinTech_Futures did a fantastic write-up of day 1 at Money2020 that included a recap of the session, "Know Your Agent: Here's How Banks Are Updating Identity Verification," where @getVGS's Chuck Yu, @getpayos's Johnathan M., Firmly's Kumar N Senthil, and Skyfire's Amir Sarhangi discussed the frameworks and protocols being built to ensure agentic transactions are secure and truly acting on behalf of the consumers using them. As Cameron Emanuel-Burns recaps in his article, Chuck Yu, CEO of @getVGS , stated that while the financial services industry began reacting to the "agentic presence" around 18 months ago, it is only in the last couple of months that banks have fully awoken to the challenge. Amir Sarhangi, CEO and founder of Skyfire, added that institutions are still "trying to figure out what their strategy should be". Chuck closed the session by speaking to the most important thing to "get right" for agentic commerce to be successful: confidence by all the subsequent parties involved in an agentic transaction that the purchase is not being made by a bad actor; something that starts with the handshake, that is, the user giving their card credential to an agent. ➡️ Read the full article by Fintech Futures: lnkd.in/gES7FZwj 🔗 Learn more about how VGS is enabling secure agentic commerce transactions: verygoodsecurity.com/agentic… #VGS #Money2020 #Money200USA #AgenticCommerce
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If you're working on agentic commerce, this conversation between @a16z 's @arampell and @terryangelos is a must-watch. #VGS #agenticcommerce #a16z #AIpayments #instinct #muse
The wallet wars are here. Very Good Security chief strategy officer Terry Angelos joins a16z's Alex Rampell, his TrialPay co-founder from back in 2006 (TrialPay was later acquired by Visa), to discuss how agents are learning to spend money. "Agents have all of a sudden become significantly more helpful and useful because they effectively have arms and legs, which are payment credentials." VGS holds the payment credentials behind about 1/3 of all e-commerce, and now it's helping AI agents pay merchants. If you've bought anything online, there's a good chance VGS has already helped keep your card safe. In the last three months, Terry says agents went from "spectators to actors." Once an agent has your payment credentials, it can book the piano teacher it previously could only find and recommend. Now Stripe's Link, Shopify's Shop Pay, and PayPal are racing to connect to agents. It's all headed toward open standards from the card networks: agentic tokens that let an agent pay with your actual card. VGS went from zero agentic tokens to a few million a week in three months. 0:55 From TrialPay to Visa to VGS 2:05 How VGS vaults 1/3 of e-commerce 6:05 Why big merchants use 3-5 processors 9:55 Why AI agents need a payment vault 12:15 Agents go from "spectators to actors" 13:40 The wallet wars, old and new 19:55 Walled gardens vs open standards 23:55 How agents can pay with your real card 26:40 Your saved card goes multiplayer 29:40 How do you trust an agent's purchase? 32:35 Who pays when your agent gets it wrong 35:40 Why Amazon blocks agents 39:50 What's overhyped and underhyped 43:35 When merchants get agents too 45:40 Why agents could break card rewards 47:00 VGS's eras: vault, updates, network @terryangelos @arampell
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VGS retweeted
How your AI agent can pay with your credit card, without ever holding it: 1. Your card stays stored in a trusted wallet. 2. When your agent goes to buy something, the wallet creates an agentic token: a stand-in card number that only works at that store, with limits like "don't spend more than $100." 3. Your agent hands the token to the store. 4. The store runs it through its usual payment processor, and the charge lands on your real card, with your rewards and card benefits intact. "AOL was a helpful set of training wheels for getting everyone online, but the open web ultimately won. We think the same thing will happen with agents as well." Full piece from VGS's @terryangelos on the Wallet Wars: a16z.news/p/wallet-wars
Wallet Wars: Agents need payment credentials as they become the new UX for $7T in ecommerce. Enter the Wallet Wars and why the AOL-era of agentic commerce will give way to open standards.
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VGS's Terry Angelos and a16z's Alex Rampell on the one thing AI agent payments can't afford to break: the right to get your money back. Terry: "I asked Instinct to go and help me find these lights, and it found the lights at Walmart... when it came time to pay, Link [my payment wallet] didn't have a connection to Walmart. It can't just give my card over to the agent and over to Walmart." "If there's a problem... I call up my bank... And they say, 'Well, we don't see a Walmart transaction here... We just see a [Link] transaction.'" Alex: "One of the reasons why Visa and Mastercard have such impregnable positions is because they intermediate everything, and they set the rules, and chargebacks are very important." "It's a trust mechanism. I pay you for lights. You don't deliver the lights... You actually have rules by which I can kind of lodge a complaint." "That's high utility, actually even for the merchant... I'm much more willing to buy with a merchant knowing that if they don't actually deliver a product that works, I can get my money back." @terryangelos @arampell
The wallet wars are here. Very Good Security chief strategy officer Terry Angelos joins a16z's Alex Rampell, his TrialPay co-founder from back in 2006 (TrialPay was later acquired by Visa), to discuss how agents are learning to spend money. "Agents have all of a sudden become significantly more helpful and useful because they effectively have arms and legs, which are payment credentials." VGS holds the payment credentials behind about 1/3 of all e-commerce, and now it's helping AI agents pay merchants. If you've bought anything online, there's a good chance VGS has already helped keep your card safe. In the last three months, Terry says agents went from "spectators to actors." Once an agent has your payment credentials, it can book the piano teacher it previously could only find and recommend. Now Stripe's Link, Shopify's Shop Pay, and PayPal are racing to connect to agents. It's all headed toward open standards from the card networks: agentic tokens that let an agent pay with your actual card. VGS went from zero agentic tokens to a few million a week in three months. 0:55 From TrialPay to Visa to VGS 2:05 How VGS vaults 1/3 of e-commerce 6:05 Why big merchants use 3-5 processors 9:55 Why AI agents need a payment vault 12:15 Agents go from "spectators to actors" 13:40 The wallet wars, old and new 19:55 Walled gardens vs open standards 23:55 How agents can pay with your real card 26:40 Your saved card goes multiplayer 29:40 How do you trust an agent's purchase? 32:35 Who pays when your agent gets it wrong 35:40 Why Amazon blocks agents 39:50 What's overhyped and underhyped 43:35 When merchants get agents too 45:40 Why agents could break card rewards 47:00 VGS's eras: vault, updates, network @terryangelos @arampell
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There’s a 135-person remote company quietly powering payments for 1/3 of e-commerce AND working with frontier AI labs. Open roles at @getVGS:
Wallet Wars: Agents need payment credentials as they become the new UX for $7T in ecommerce. Enter the Wallet Wars and why the AOL-era of agentic commerce will give way to open standards.
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Join @getVGS's Melissa Shields for the session, "Identity in the Age of Tokenization," on the @money2020 Exchange Stage next Tuesday at 2:20 pm! Together with Debbie Guerra (Arrive), David Kelts, and Rodger Desai (Prove), Melissa will dissect the landscape of token formats and their practical applications (COF network tokens, eCommerce tokens, agentic, etc.) and address how to balance tokenization with visibility and UX. 👏 📅 Date: Tuesday, October 20 ⏰ Time: 2:50-3:15 PM 📍 Location: Exchange Stage, 🔗 Full session details: us.money2020.com/agenda/agen… Can't make the panel, but interested in exploring this topic more? Connect with Melissa and the VGS team while you're in Vegas: 🤝 Book a meeting: info.verygoodsecurity.com/mo… 🥂 Register for our HH on Sunday and Tuesday: info.verygoodsecurity.com/va… #Money2020 #Tokenization #DigitalIdentity #Payments #AgenticAI #Fintech #VGS
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How payments change in the age of Agentic Commerce: - Agents will be the UX to $7T in ecommerce - Credential vaults are now multi-player - Stripe speedrunning payments is the AOL-era for agentic commerce but everyone will move to open standards - Why @arampell is "under monetized" today and how his agent will spend more $$ on his cycling gear
The wallet wars are here. Very Good Security chief strategy officer Terry Angelos joins a16z's Alex Rampell, his TrialPay co-founder from back in 2006 (TrialPay was later acquired by Visa), to discuss how agents are learning to spend money. "Agents have all of a sudden become significantly more helpful and useful because they effectively have arms and legs, which are payment credentials." VGS holds the payment credentials behind about 1/3 of all e-commerce, and now it's helping AI agents pay merchants. If you've bought anything online, there's a good chance VGS has already helped keep your card safe. In the last three months, Terry says agents went from "spectators to actors." Once an agent has your payment credentials, it can book the piano teacher it previously could only find and recommend. Now Stripe's Link, Shopify's Shop Pay, and PayPal are racing to connect to agents. It's all headed toward open standards from the card networks: agentic tokens that let an agent pay with your actual card. VGS went from zero agentic tokens to a few million a week in three months. 0:55 From TrialPay to Visa to VGS 2:05 How VGS vaults 1/3 of e-commerce 6:05 Why big merchants use 3-5 processors 9:55 Why AI agents need a payment vault 12:15 Agents go from "spectators to actors" 13:40 The wallet wars, old and new 19:55 Walled gardens vs open standards 23:55 How agents can pay with your real card 26:40 Your saved card goes multiplayer 29:40 How do you trust an agent's purchase? 32:35 Who pays when your agent gets it wrong 35:40 Why Amazon blocks agents 39:50 What's overhyped and underhyped 43:35 When merchants get agents too 45:40 Why agents could break card rewards 47:00 VGS's eras: vault, updates, network @terryangelos @arampell
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AI agents can now book the hotel and order the cleats, as long as they're allowed to pay. That's set off the "wallet wars," with major players racing to connect to agents: - Stripe's Link: 300M users - Shopify's Shop Pay: 250M users - PayPal: 400M+ users How your agent pays matters. If a wallet pays the store with its own stand-in card, the purchase goes through, but your card rewards, purchase protections, and relationship with the store can get lost along the way. Say your agent books a United flight on your airline credit card. If the wallet pays United with its own virtual card, the money moves, and your miles may never show up. Agents also have to pick the right card for each purchase, and when one books the wrong hotel dates, someone has to make it right. Where it's all headed: new open standards from Visa, Mastercard, and Amex. "The best of all worlds is a future where my agent can use my credit card, without having my credit card." Full piece from VGS's @terryangelos on the Wallet Wars: a16z.news/p/wallet-wars
Wallet Wars: Agents need payment credentials as they become the new UX for $7T in ecommerce. Enter the Wallet Wars and why the AOL-era of agentic commerce will give way to open standards.
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Why Stripe is speedrunning the AOL-era of agentic commerce: Agents will be the new UX to $7T in global ecommerce. But many agentic transactions today are not made by its customers. Instead, a wallet (such as Stripe’s Link) uses their own virtual card to purchase on my behalf. This means there are two transactions occurring: one between me and Stripe and one where the Stripe wallet “shops on my behalf”. This walled garden allows the transaction to work but breaks the relationship with between me and the merchant. A good example is a recent transaction I made at Walmart. The agent paid using a virtual card but when I was asked to sign-up for Walmart+, the follow-on transaction failed (Walmart didn't have my card on file!). This AOL-era won’t last. Instead, agents and wallets will start to use agentic tokens (from the card networks) that enable agents to use my card without getting sensitive information. Over the coming months, I expect agents and wallets to adopt the new token standards from Visa/MC/AMEX and move us away from walled gardens to open standards.
Wallet Wars: Agents need payment credentials as they become the new UX for $7T in ecommerce. Enter the Wallet Wars and why the AOL-era of agentic commerce will give way to open standards.
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In his recent article, “Wallet Wars,” for @a16z @getVGS's Chief Strategy Officer, @terryangelos, explores why the race to enable agent payments goes well beyond getting a transaction approved. Read more: a16z.news/p/wallet-wars #VGS #agenticcommerce #walletwars #payments
Wallet Wars: Agents need payment credentials as they become the new UX for $7T in ecommerce. Enter the Wallet Wars and why the AOL-era of agentic commerce will give way to open standards.
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What if loyalty points moved as easily as money? 🛒 👀 The traditional shopping cart is siloed, and loyalty can be its most fragmented piece. Join @getVGS at @money2020 USA for "The Universal Shopping Cart: Leveraging Blockchain for Real-Time Loyalty," a deep dive into using blockchain as a universal tokenizer. The session explores how the future of loyalty could shift from static databases to real-time, portable, distributed assets across a single, unified shopping experience. 📅 Date: Monday, October 19th ⏰ Time: 4:20-5:00 PM PT 📍 Location: Master Track Deep Dive stage Speakers: 🎤 Sheryl Pflaum, Board Member, Collinson Loyalty 🎤 Rohit Mishra, VP of Product, Shopify Moderator: 🎙️ Melissa Shields, Head of Merchant Strategy, VGS 🔗 Full session details: us.money2020.com/agenda/agen… See you there! #Money2020 #Loyalty #Blockchain #Tokenization #Payments #Fintech
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For over a decade, banks and fintechs have fine-tuned KYC protocols. Now, AI agents are starting to transact on behalf of real people, and someone has to verify them, secure them, and catch the fraudulent ones before they scale. @getVGS's Chuck Yu is addressing this with firmly's Kumar N Senthil, @getpayos's Johnathan M., @trySkyfire's Amir Sarhangi, and @jpmorgan's Frank Medrano on the @money2020 USA ArrA.I.val Stage in the session, "Know Your Agent: Here’s How Banks Are Updating Identity Verification." The panel will dig into the "Know Your Agent" protocols and digital identity frameworks being built, and how fintechs, banks, and platforms can collaborate to keep an agent from running off with your life savings. 📅 Date: Monday, October 19th ⏰ Time: 10:25–10:55 AM 📍 Location: ArrA.I.val Stage 🔗 Session details: us.money2020.com/agenda/agen… Interested in learning more about how VGS is enabling agentic commerce? Connect with us at the show: 🤝 Book a meeting: info.verygoodsecurity.com/mo… 🥂 Register for our happy hour in the VGS Vault Lounge on Sunday and Tuesday at 4:30 PM: info.verygoodsecurity.com/va… #Money2020 #KnowYourAgent #AgenticAI #FraudPrevention #DigitalIdentity
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