ByCoinGape
Even amid red charts, crypto companies are continuously building out products and rolling out new features. But what is something that almost every crypto firm seem to be building right now?
Well a new race is quietly taking shape across the crypto industry. While much of the market conversation still revolves around ETFs, tokenization, and institutional adoption, many of the biggest firms in Web3 are increasingly focused on a different frontier: payments designed for AI agents.
Zak Folkman, co-founder of World Liberty Financial, recently summed up the opportunity in a post on X. He argued that the most compelling aspect of agentic payments isn’t the technology itself but the fact that the potential market remains undefined.
The most exciting thing about agentic payments isn’t just the technology.
It’s that the market size is literally unknowable right now. AI agents transacting autonomously will create use cases we haven’t imagined yet.
We’re building USD1 infrastructure for it today. That’s the…
— Zak Folkman (@zakfolkman) March 5, 2026
Zak further informed that developers at WLFI are already “building USD1 infrastructure for it today.” While WLFI is the latest, it is not the only.
At its core, the concept of agentic payments aims to build financial systems where autonomous software agents can hold, send, and manage money. In practice, this could mean an AI agent paying for APIs, negotiating subscriptions, purchasing compute power, or even executing micro-transactions across digital marketplaces.
The idea is gaining traction among leading crypto firms and founder with their total transaction volume already crossing $43 million in the past nine months.
Dan Romero, co-founder of decentralized social network Farcaster, who recently departed to join Tempo, has now revealed that he is developing a project centered on proxy payments and stablecoins. In a X post, he wrote, “We’re working on a new thing related to agentic payments and stablecoins.”
We're working on a new thing related to agentic payments and stablecoins.
If you're working on something in this area and you want to build on Tempo, reach out.
— Dan Romero (@dwr) March 4, 2026
The initiative is tied to Tempo, a stablecoin-focused blockchain backed by Stripe and crypto investment firm Paradigm. A founder who quitted social network to now work on Agentic Payments reveals the already growing attempts in the field.
Also Read: NYSE Parent ICE Invests in OKX
One of the clearest signals of this shift is also coming from payments giant Stripe, which has increasingly leaned into crypto and stablecoin infrastructure.
Stripe has been experimenting with tools that allow AI agents to initiate payments directly through APIs. As its Crypto Produt Lead Jennifer Le shared, it is working to enable software to automatically pay for digital services such as data access, compute resources, or API calls. Instead of traditional checkout systems, these payments can be triggered programmatically whenever a service is used.
Also Read: Is Your Crypto Exchange Ready for the IRS’ New 1099-DA Tax Rules?
Stablecoin issuer Circle is also positioning its infrastructure for this emerging ecosystem.
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire recently highlighted how USDC-enabled payment gateways could power AI agents capable of holding and spending digital dollars autonomously. According to Allaire, the rapid development of tools for agent payments reinforces the idea that the “agentic economy” may naturally run on stablecoins and blockchain rails.
Startups are already experimenting with such infrastructure. One example is Sponge Wallet, a project supported by Y Combinator, which aims to provide programmable wallets designed specifically for AI agents to manage and spend funds.
Crypto exchanges are also exploring how agents might interact with financial systems.
Coinbase has been developing infrastructure that enables AI agents to operate their own crypto wallets. It is allowing AI Agents to store assets, interact with decentralized applications, and execute transactions automatically.
The exchange has also introduced the x402 protocol, a payment standard that enables AI agents to automatically pay for APIs and digital services using stablecoins. The protocol revives the long-unused HTTP 402 “Payment Required” status code, allowing servers to request payment programmatically before delivering data or compute resources.
Very soon there are going to be more AI agents than humans making transactions.
They can’t open a bank account, but they can own a crypto wallet. Think about it.
— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) March 9, 2026
This has come as the exchange’s most ambitious and standalone bet on agentic payments as its founder Brian declared recently. “very soon there are going to be more AI Agents than humans making transactions.”
Also Read: x402 founders on AI Agents
Infrastructure networks are also adapting to support the emerging machine economy.
Developers at Polygon Labs recently unveiled Agent CLI, an AI toolkit that will enable AI agents to do “everything they need to operate onchain on polygon”. With its toolkit, it allows agents powered by models like those from OpenAI or Anthropic to create wallets, send or swap tokens, bridge assets, query balances, and register on-chain identities. This all from a single interface without requiring complex custom integrations.
The tool also includes features such as session-based smart wallets with spending limits, gas payments in stablecoins, cross-chain on-ramps. It will allow verifiable agent identities via ERC-8004 NFTs, and built-in micropayment capabilities, capabilities which Sandeep Nailwal deems “essential” for AI Agents.
https://x.com/sandeepnailwal/status/2029574692097740814?s=46
And this list is not exhaustive – firms like Tether, Binance, Ethereum with its ERC-8004, Uniswap Labs, etc are all experimenting with the same.
But despite the growing momentum, agentic payments are still in their early stages. Most of the projects being built today remain experimental, and real-world applications are only beginning to emerge.
Yet the convergence of AI and crypto is already pushing companies to rethink the role of payments on the internet. The opportunity is already sizable. As of mid-2026, the global agentic AI market is estimated at roughly $11 billion, growing rapidly from around $7 billion in 2025.
AI-driven commerce could reach $1.7 trillion globally by 2030, making it one of the fastest-growing segments of the digital economy.
According to American Banker, even though only <1% of enterprise software currently uses agentic AI, this adoption is expected to rise to 33% by 2028.
And across the crypto industry, companies appear to be preparing for exactly that future. Because if machines are going to work for us, sooner or later, they will also need a way to pay.
Sneha Agrawal More Stories
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