BroadChain, April 28 - At the recent Hong Kong Web3 Festival, the integration of AI and crypto became a core topic. Hong Kong Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po noted that AI agents will analyze information and take action at machine speed, while leveraging blockchain infrastructure to enhance transaction efficiency, reshaping scenarios such as finance, trade, and supply chains. This raises a key question: When AI begins to execute tasks and handle cash flows on behalf of humans, is the existing payment system sufficient?
An intuitive question is: Can AI agents directly use bank cards, credit cards, or Apple Pay? The answer is yes. In simple scenarios, such as purchasing flight tickets on behalf of others or renewing SaaS services, AI agents use pre-authorization from users to settle payments within limits via bank cards or third-party payments, essentially functioning like intelligent automatic deductions. The Machine Payments Protocol launched by Stripe and Tempo is an example, supporting both stablecoins and fiat payments, indicating that traditional payments and crypto payments will coexist in the early stages.
However, bank cards are only suitable for the "checkout" phase, where processes like products, merchants, and orders already exist. The real challenge lies in new scenarios where AI agents continuously invoke resources and combine services in an open network. For example, an AI research agent completing an industry report may need to access multiple databases, purchase paid documents, call different model APIs, pay for chart tool fees, and even buy analysis results from another agent. Here, there are no traditional stores or single checkout pages, only API calls, micropayments, and cross-platform resource combinations.
This "agent economy" requires a new settlement infrastructure: real-time settlement, programmable payments, atomic transactions, cross-platform interoperability, and auditable ledgers. This is where stablecoins and blockchain come into play. Stablecoins provide instant, low-cost settlement, smart contracts enable condition-triggered payments, and blockchain ensures all transactions are traceable and immutable. Therefore, while bank cards are feasible in simple scenarios, the core of the AI agent economy—open, dynamic, micropayment-driven resource invocation—almost inevitably leads to crypto-native payment solutions.