A New Addition to our Team: Charting the Future of Policy and Regulations for Agentic Commerce

Today, we’re announcing that Sharda Caro Del Castillo is joining Catena as the Chief Legal & Business Officer. Why you should care takes a bit of an explanation.

We’ve written in other posts about how we’re building a regulated financial institution for AI agents. The challenge is that the regulators and policy-makers who oversee the existing financial system have only barely begun to make sense of how AI agents and stablecoins will transform financial services globally.

We believe the work regulators do is important. Financial systems need well-designed guardrails to protect the public interest and create a level playing field. Unfortunately, poorly designed regulatory schemes can have the opposite effect – stifling innovation, limiting prosperity, and creating regulatory capture for incumbents.

As a result, we’re taking a proactive approach to partnering with regulators and policy makers to ensure that the potential for agentic commerce, the value of AI agents, and the power of stablecoins isn’t capped by a failure to adapt the regulatory system to a dramatically changing technological and economic landscape.

That’s why we’ve hired an exceptional Chief Legal and Business Officer. Sharda has spent the last 25 years guiding some of the most influential fintech companies through legal complexity and growth. Check out her LinkedIn profile for the full rundown. Given how important this work is to the developers and customers we work with, we’re sharing a Q&A with Sharda to introduce her perspective and what she’ll be focused on at Catena.

What brought you to Catena Labs, and how does this opportunity feel different from your previous roles?

I have spent the last few years as a board member. I have loved keeping up with the market and understanding governance from a new perspective. As I started to think about being an operator again, I knew that I wanted to build with a broad mandate, which to me meant being part of an early-stage company. When I was first introduced to Sean, everything seemed to fall together in a way that I could not have orchestrated. A known founder in the early stages of building a groundbreaking product that has the opportunity to change how we move money globally; it was the perfect fit.

You’ve led legal teams at some of the most innovative companies in fintech and payments–PayPal, Square, Airbnb, Affirm–what originally drew you to this space, and what continues to motivate you?

My journey into fintech was the byproduct of both timing (the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010) and attitude (my willingness and confidence that change breeds opportunity). In a way, I was a bit of a “non-lawyer” lawyer during that time, choosing not to look solely at risk mitigation and management, and instead to focus on how we could rethink systems and products to serve customers better. As someone who grew up in developing countries, I continue to be motivated by working on products that have the potential to change our financial ecosystem to be more accessible and inclusive on a global scale.

You’ve worked on groundbreaking products like 'Pay in Four' at Affirm. How do you see AI transforming how financial products are designed, delivered, and regulated?

I think that we’re at the cusp of a new era in terms of product design, and even delivery, when we think about AI agents providing services. In the case of financial products, I envision greater efficiency, equity, and accuracy as digital agents employ best practices to deliver consistent and compliant products and services.

You’ve navigated complex regulatory environments across legacy banks, fintech disruptors, and global platforms. How does AI-driven finance compare?

I am excited to learn about the opportunities presented by AI-driven finance. There are some obvious efficiencies to be gained by introducing digital agents into the financial ecosystem, which would be immensely beneficial. But, I also think that AI may help us expedite and move exponentially to improve some of the consumer protection issues that regulators worry about; this is an area that I look forward to exploring with Sean and the team.

Catena’s mission to build an AI-native financial institution is ambitious. What excites you most about this vision, and where do you see the greatest legal and regulatory challenges?

The fact that Catena has an ambitious mission is the draw. I like the challenge of big problems, and in particular, working on novel solutions to challenges that have yet to be solved. In my experience, I’ve found that technology generally improves the financial services experience. In the case of an AI-native financial institution, we’ll need to think through legal and regulatory issues as applied to digital agents; this will require communication, clarification, and collaboration with various industry agencies, regulators, and commercial partners. However, I’m confident that those conversations have the potential to shift how we interact with money at a societal level.

The rise of agentic commerce introduces new questions around identity, authentication, and liability. How do you see the legal framework evolving to keep pace with autonomous systems?

The law is always evolving to keep pace with innovation. I remember when prepaid cards were in their nascent stages of development, and regulators were concerned with BSA/AML risk. At that time, I advocated for ways in which safety and soundness could be balanced with serving the unbanked and underbanked. I see the current legal challenges in the same light—we will have to build trust and clear paths of communication with our regulators while we innovate so that the intent and impacts are well understood, even if the laws are still catching up.

As someone who has helped shape the legal strategy of household-name companies, how do you balance risk mitigation with speed and experimentation in emerging tech?

This is really an art more than a science. We don’t always know what is around the bend until we turn the corner. But if we start to put too many safeguards in place before one can even get to the corner, we thwart progress. So, risk management during the nascent stages of development needs to be thought of in the context of meeting public policy goals while moving quickly to experiment and understand customer experience. The legal strategy at this stage in Catena’s lifecycle is to ensure that product development is consistent with the public interest; this tells us that there’s a path to compliance.