According to reports, Sandy Kaul, Head of Digital Assets and Innovation at Franklin Templeton, has stated on the X platform that AI agents represent the next disruptive application scenario within the blockchain sector, poised to reshape the landscape of payment infrastructure. The fundamental reason lies in a structural mismatch within traditional payment architectures.
Visa Inc (NYSE: V), in a joint report with the investment analytics platform Artemis, has pointed out that traditional credit card networks, designed for low-frequency human-to-human commercial transactions, are completely unsuitable for the machine-to-machine micropayment scenarios required by AI agents, due to limitations such as high fees and settlement times of one to three days. The latter demands infrastructure with near-zero fees and extremely fast settlement to support commercial operations.
From a structural perspective, high-performance public blockchains and major payment players are accelerating their efforts to fill this gap. Networks such as Aptos, Solana, and BNB Chain, with their ability to settle transactions within seconds, are seen as ideal foundational layers for supporting an agent-based economy. Concurrently, Visa's cryptocurrency division and Tempo, backed by Stripe, both launched AI tools in March, with Visa's solution already enabling same-day payments for AI agents.
Market validation data further supports this trend. Data indicates that the x402 payment protocol, developed by Coinbase Global Inc (NASDAQ: COIN), has processed $15 million in payment volume across over 109 million transactions since its launch in May 2025. This demonstrates that automated inter-machine payment protocols are transitioning from proof-of-concept to a stage of scaled application, emerging as a new frontier for blockchain value capture following DeFi.
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