Who Pays When AI Acts? Payments Today and the Future of Agent-Driven Transactions

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1. 0:00

   who pays when AI acts payments today and the future of agent-driven transactions. Last panel you guys heard a little bit about as that movement of liquidity ends up onchain both you know onchain rails and agentic rails. Now it's like all right now that it's onchain what happens next? Um why don't we do just like one sentence intros. We don't do you know super longwinded intros but we got a

2. 0:24

   plenty of people on the panel here. Uh Ben start with you. We'll we'll move down the line. Hey guys, um I'm Benjamin Strrisky. I am on the strategic projects and investments team at the Starknet Foundation. I'm uh Kendall, founder of Proximity, and we basically do stable coins for Near Intense.

3. 0:44

   I'm Nigel on the go to market team at Bridge. Uh we do stable coin orchestration, issuance, and stable coin link card issuance. Hi, I'm Rich from Moon. Um I'm VP for payment partnerships and banking. um so effectively look after everything which is on the fiat side of crypto. Um so uh yeah, I'm a bit more oldfashioned traditional banking guy than the crypto guys.

4. 1:06

   Um I uh I think for at least a little while longer we're going to have a a fiat system. Fortunately or unfortunately hopefully we can move all that onchain at some point and then we'll we'll rethink you know what the on-ramp situation looks like. But for now uh we're still moving between fiat we're moving between onchain transactions. Um, Richard, why don't we why don't we start with you? You know, how does the mo move movement of money

5. 1:31

   between off-chain and onchain rails? Can agents basically abstract that away? Because it feels like if you're in one environment, if you're offchain, you've kind of got your set of services. If you're onchain, you got another set of services. You can kind of work pretty efficiently in these, you know, different environments. But if you have an agentic layer, does all of that get subsumed and you can translate a little

6. 1:51

   bit more easily between off offchain and onchain? Um so I don't necessarily think so. No. Um because um whether we like it or not, we are still very much reliant on the banking like sector, right? Um and the problem with the banking sector is that um it's built on humans, right?

7. 2:06

   So humans are the ones that effectively uh authorize a transaction or liable for a transaction and so on. Um yeah, with agents like uh you know to to to work on the processing of transactions on behalf of you got to build like a delegation layer right in there. So you have to set limits and you have to set authorizations and so on. So I don't necessarily think that like you know an agent will just take everything away um

8. 2:28

   because we don't necessarily want them to right you still want to have some sort of level of control um in there but it's like how you then uh instigate that control in the agent um so it could take away 80% of it. Got it. Um, and so guys, how are we thinking about and Ben like you know maybe maybe from the privacy perspective, the startnet perspective, how are you thinking about stable coins and agents, you know, as they move onchain and we'll kind of flow between our our, you know, onchain, off-chain partners here, uh, with Kendall and Nigel.

9. 2:59

   Yeah. Um, so I think if we really want to see a lot of stable coin activity and payments activity um, onchain that it's going to have to be private. Um, you know, you look at traditional finance, almost everything is regulated and compliant, but you know, if you pay someone through Wells Fargo, um, no one sees your payment history. When you're receiving your salary, no one sees your salary. Um, and so, you know, almost every public blockchain today is public.

10. 3:24

    Obviously, we haven't really seen payments take off in the way that I think a lot of people would have assumed 5 years ago that in 2026, people would be receiving their salaries on chain. uh people would be paying other people on chain and it happens but not to the extent that we thought it would and I think privacy will have to be the biggest unlock for that.

11. 3:41

    Got it. Um and how do we fit agents into this as well? Like as we bring tokenized assets on chain, it feels like we've started with stable coins. We've now got treasuries. We're kind of moving down the risk curve. We're token tokenizing all of these assets. when we end up with a place where we can effectively earn yield at, you know, the drop of a hat, uh, more stable coins are on chain, both

12. 4:04

    yield bearing and and non-yield bearing, you know, where do you think agents, because it feels like we're actually building more and more products for agents, where do you think agents are going to prioritize their cash? Maybe they're, you know, what are they holding uh, when it comes to these payment currencies? if they're sending money between agents and agents, what what do you think are the attributes that they're most looking for in stable

13. 4:26

    coins? Is it privacy or is it maybe something else? I mean, access more than anything. Um, and I think that's sort of the big problem like the the infrastructure is starting to really get there, right? I mean, link did a pretty cool like launch last week um that is the first practical way that I've seen to pay with agents for like services you actually want.

14. 4:46

    That being said, like cards are, you know, not the best route for like microp payments that probably are useful way to pay for certain API calls. But then the problem we have right now is like there's not MPP is really cool, X402 are really cool. Uh, and there are some services that are starting to offer their APIs, but uh it's early, right?

15. 5:03

    And so I think as we see basically just more adoption of those rails and more businesses that recognize that they'll actually have a lot of growth if they have a good product offered to agents and the friction is very low both like on-ramps uh actually holding the balance in your wallet and then having services that you actually want to consume as an agent or as a user using agents like

16. 5:26

    that's all those things kind of have to come together and it's moving very fast so I probably we're talking months but uh those pieces are still not there today. I would I would also add that I think uh you know the same way that AI has made producing reports more efficient, producing presentations more efficient, that these AI systems when they're making payments, when they're using DeFi, when they're just operating on chain, they're going to want to do that in the most efficient way possible and

17. 5:50

    really the most capital efficient way possible. So they're going to be designed to use the cheapest networks, to use the products with the lowest operating costs in order to make as much money as possible. And I hate to use a swear word, right? compliance, right, comes into it.

18. 6:04

    But, um, you know, you're talking about like agents on cards, right? Um, you know, that and and I agree we're not anywhere near like how seamless and and UX it needs to be, right? Because even if you like we launched an agent card last week, right? But we still have to have that 3DS authentication layer built into it. So, you can tell your agent to go and buy you something, right? And it can scour the market and it can find you the best possible price and so on. You still have to do a two-step

19. 6:28

    authentication, right? when it finds it because it's a card attached to the agent. So, like how do you get through that without every single financial institution blowing up overnight? Nigel, I want to get you in here. Give I I know your your wheels are spinning. I want Yeah. Yeah. Wheels wheels are spinning.

20. 6:44

    So, I think a few things to to your previous question. Um, and I think you know, one kind of interesting development in the market is there are more and more stable coins that are launching. And if I'm a user, there's probably three things that that I care about. One, you know, first and foremost, is this a safe asset? Is this actually worth a dollar? Two, what sort of upside do I have from holding this?

21. 7:09

    Um whether that's accessing yields through DeFi or maybe you're using, you know, a bespoke stable coin that some company has issued and you're kind of in their in their ecosystem in that regard. And then three is what can I actually buy with this? Um and and that step of hey, if I'm holding, you know, USDT on a certain chain and this merchant um or you know, the agent that's receiving the

22. 7:36

    payment wants to receive a different stable coin on a different chain, how does that conversion and interoperability happen? Um and ultimately that needs to be abstracted away from the end user. And at what cost? Right. As well, right?

23. 7:50

    Because I mean when you're doing any type of transaction online, you have to be super visible when it comes to the cost, right? So the individual has to know how much is it costing me, right? To to do that. So to your point about, you know, agent A talking to agent B, right? Agent A wants USDC, agent B wants PYUSD or something. How who is doing that conversion, right? How much is it costing? Um and and that's where I think again horrible word, but compliance

24. 8:16

    kicks in, right? because you have to trace the the transaction all the way back to the beginning, right? You have to be able to see who initiated that transaction. So agent to agent to agent to agent if we get to that point, right, it masks like the transaction layer completely and and I think that's where like a lot of banks just get super scared, right? Because there is no accountability, right? Or well, there is accountability, but it's like really muddy, right, in terms of accountability.

25. 8:42

    So So Richard said two swear words so far. So, I want to I want to challenge actually and and hear everyone else's opinions on this. Maybe agents don't care about a compliance. Maybe maybe banks care a lot about compliance, but maybe agents are so innovative. They don't care about branding. They don't care about compliance. They care is this thing secure? Code is law. Am I am I do I see any smart contract vulnerabilities? No.

26. 9:04

    All right. I'm gonna I'm things are, you know, they're they're great for start. And I'm gonna take out my suit here and agree with Richard that compliance definitely matters. start and um I think ultimately it doesn't really matter what the agent adoption it's who controls the agent and if we want you know mass agent adoption the it's who controls the agent and if we want you know mass agent adoption the the reality

27. 9:28

    controls the agent and if we want you know mass agent adoption the the reality is that in the agent and if we want you know mass agent adoption the the reality is that in the United States and if we want you know mass agent adoption option. The the reality is that in the United States there is regulation as there should be. Um and if we want major payment systems to be interoperable with agents. So if we want JP Morgan Chase to

28. 9:52

    actually be willing to you know use these these systems then they're going to have to just be compliant. Um you know crypto has a long history of unbanking people and we don't want the same thing to happen to AI agent users and so they're just going to have to be compliant with the law. And just to add on to that, I think, hate to say it, but it's a relatively easy fix, right, as well, because agents are programmable, right? So, you program the permissions

29. 10:17

    into the agent, right? And the permissions you program into the agent are is career safe to to transact in, right? Should because the agent is always going to go out and do what's right for you, right? Because that's ultimately what it's programmed to do.

30. 10:30

    Um, but you can program limits like screenings like you can program use this asset over that asset like and so on. You can program the agent. So as long as we get the programmability into the agent, right, then it shouldn't be a problem.

31. 10:46

    I'm also really interested to see how the relationship between kind of the the KYC and the identity of of the owner of the agent and the kind of risk and reputation and and trust basis of that agent that's out you know conducting commerce in the wild. how those two um will be related over time because if you are going to have a human that's associated with an agent um then you can kind of get some of that reputation and

32. 11:17

    compliance coverage that way. But you could also imagine a scenario where you know someone buys your a fraudster buys your KYC information off the dark web KYC's links that identity to an agent and then you know prompts that agent go out and you know scam as many people as you can.

33. 11:37

    So I think it's like a a new kind of like vector of risk that we're all going to have to figure out how to navigate together. Yeah, that's a good point. I guess it's like you can already still I mean you can already buy KYC on that archway but the things you can do are like um hard when you like have an agent that can go out and operate autonomously. Um yeah I mean I think there's even like there's the compliance aspect but I think businesses also do want to know like not

34. 12:01

    even purely for compliance reasons. They want to know who they're interacting with because that helps them make their product better and it it helps them like re retarget and retargeting agents will be a thing, right? Like you'll you'll have an agent use you and you'll be like we want to we want them to keep coming back and using us and I don't know what that's going to look like. People are going to figure that out. So I think

35. 12:18

    there's going to be at least some like some form of agent identity like for compliance reasons for financial transactions but also just for for business. I'm curious what has worked so well in in terms of you know getting adoption.

36. 12:30

    I'm curious user adoption and and and in in terms of you know getting st you know the businesses and you guys have geared that towards I'd imagine most of you know the businesses and you guys have geared that towards humans you know the businesses and you guys have geared that towards humans so far and do you think that so when you're you know looking at adoption what has worked so far and do you think that will carry over to agents you know moon Moon Moon Pay's got quite

37. 13:01

    a bit of users here. Maybe we'll just go down the line. Um yeah, I think um so what are we doing so far that like works, right? I think trying to make things headless, right? I think um would would be massively beneficial to this space. I think honestly like we are literally tip of the iceberg, right, when it comes to to agents. So I think know we are figuring stuff out as we go.

38. 13:22

    When you say headless, you mean like a like maybe you can just just like so Moon agnostic, right? So Moon Pay doesn't appear in like any um environment. So completely headless for for the individual. Um and it's it's something that we're doing across our business as a whole as well. So um yeah, when you plug Moon Pay in for other ons, we're making it a headless experience as well. So it's like unbranded.

39. 13:43

    They don't know that they're using correct. Yeah. Yeah. Um but I think also um like we've touched upon before which is um just setting limits, right? Um you know, spending limits, asset limits, like velocity limits, right? As well. Um yeah. So your agent can't just go off and just spend a thousand things, right, in in the space of five minutes because it can do that, right? A human can't, right? Physically do that, right? Agents can. Um, so I think like we're just

40. 14:06

    figuring that out as we go, setting in these sort of parameters. Um, and that's why I was saying like agents being pro programmable helps. Um, but yeah, we're just figuring out as we go. Yeah, I think um specifically as it pertains to, you know, Aentic stable coin payments, probably the thing that's working the best so far is the the narrative and the hype. Um like all like all things and and that's a cheeky

41. 14:32

    answer, but you know, um thinking about the uh stable coin payment use cases that now are becoming more and more ubiquitous, crossber payments, dollar access, etc. a few years ago, you know, they were uh powered by kind of narrative and hype as well. And ultimately what it comes down to is, you know, especially for any business that's um coming more from like a web two direction, ultimately the the product

42. 15:02

    experiences um that they unlock for customers and for their businesses need to have enough value that they can get over that hump of of getting comfortable with some of the uncertainty and some of the risks of leaning into, you know, uh uh a part of the industry where where we're we're kind of building the plane while flying.

43. 15:25

    Yeah. Um I agree with all that. Um yeah, I mean I think like where so it's kind of counter to the idea of agent authentication, although I think that'll start to get better, but like to to your point, uh Richard, I I think that the low friction experience is going to be like the the products that see the most agent adoption. I mean, first and foremost, they're going to have to work.

44. 15:45

    Um but second, it's going to be about low friction, right? A common thing if you're using agents today, whether it's coding or for anything, is you you run into some blocker and that blocker is usually some type of like you need to sign up for an account and there's not an agent friendly way to do that. Um, and I I expect that I mean one of the nice things about onchain is once you get over that hurdle of getting onchain, which fortunately is getting much easier thanks to people like me and bridge. Um,

45. 16:09

    then everything's actually extremely low friction. And so I think as I'm very optimistic that the friction of getting on and off chain will will go as close to zero as possible. It'll always be some but as close to zero as possible and then agents will want to use those products because they'll be the lowest friction option in a lot of cases.

46. 16:26

    One one interesting point you made there just to add on to it is like you mentioned that case where you know you're talking to a chatbot and then ultimately it needs to sign up for something and it can't and that blocks you. The other piece of this is going to be the existing infrastructure and how businesses actually like cater to agents and and design their sign up and onboarding flows to fit into some of those constraints that they have.

47. 16:55

    Yeah. So to finish this off from our perspective, Stark's perspective, it's about creating the best system possible for the AI agents. Um and so there's a few different parameters there that matter. Um the first obviously is throughput. Um a agents are going to need block space on starknet. That's no longer really a blocker. Um we can support as much as we need to um given the current demand today. Right. The the second um I think is going to be network

48. 17:19

    level uh configurations. Um and so everyone has probably seen the jokes about open claw, you know, spending my entire balance on some random nonsense, right? And so that actually can be a real issue. And if you give an AI agent a stablecoin balance, I would I would think it's actually not your money anymore. You have a very high probability of receiving it back, but it's actually secured by the code

49. 17:43

    obviously of the of the agent. And so it's the code's money. Um, and so, you know, Starknet supports native account abstraction, which enables you to set spending limits, other other logic that, you know, sends a little bit more of the control of your funds back to yourself.

50. 18:01

    The the third from our perspective is privacy. And I've touched on this a little bit already, but AI agents um are going to replicate what works in traditional finance today for payments. And the reality is that payments need to be private, not public. And so with our privacy launch next month, you'll be able to have privacy for any asset, which means privacy transfers for stable coins, which then means private payments for AI agents. Um and the last one, and

51. 18:25

    I think this is a lot farther out, um you know, is decentralization. And while that might not matter too much today, um later later stage AI agents aren't going to necessarily want to operate on a network where someone can ruck them. Um and so I think from our perspective, a path towards getting towards being a decentralized network makes us very attractive for AI agents. uh sticking

52. 18:48

    with this notion of privacy because I I was kind of talking about this three-headed dragon uh on the last panel and you know Zcash falls into that and I think there are elements of of Near's AI agent stack with openclaw ironclaw that also takes into account this privacy hyperlquid not so much but you know we'll maybe we'll see down the down down the road um you know you you guys deal with a lot of businesses do do I know I

53. 19:12

    know starknet's perspective privacy is important you know Nigel maybe from the bridge perspective that you know and and Moon Pay and Proximity as well. From the B2B side, how much do businesses prioritize privacy when it comes to integrating stable coin payments?

54. 19:29

    Yeah, I think it uh it evolves kind of as they get deeper down the the rabbit hole. You know, first they they'll look at stable coins and see like what benefit can this this integrate, you know, integrating stable coins, what benefits can it bring to my business? Um and then at a certain point when they're going through and you know let's say you're setting up uh you know a use case where uh an employee is getting their

55. 19:54

    salary streamed to them that's tied to you know a wallet that has a stable coin linked card. They go and do all of their everyday spend. at a certain point that company realizes hopefully before the end user like okay there is you can see how much money this person is making and everything that they're spending it on um and that's obviously a big problem so I agree like privacy um is over time going to become table stakes um and it's also important as we're thinking about like different privacy protocols how

56. 20:25

    does that fit in and become you know not mutually exclusive with compliance so it's a matter of making sure like the entities that need that information for regulatory purposes can get it. Um but it's kind of on a need to know basis where not everything is just out on chain.

57. 20:42

    But that's where like tokenization comes into play, right? Because you can share data, right? KYC tokenization, privacy tokenization. Yeah. And I think um no, I mean I think that it's exactly right like that it very much step one is like that they get some other benefit. I think that it's exactly right like that very much step one is like the interesting uh addition from using stable coins and then they realize I mean so I think an interesting that's where the the demand is right now when

58. 21:08

    uh and they realize like oh this is super primary so like everyone could see all these you know crossboarder pay right now uh and they realize like oh this is super public so like everyone could see all these you know crossber payments now uh and they realize like oh this is super public so like everyone could see all these you know crossboarder payments that I'm putting out there that's not like that's not how they want to operate their business, right? So like yeah, very much like it's a it's a second order uh demand, but uh

59. 21:32

    now that a lot of businesses have gotten over that first hurdle demand, it has become extremely important and so we have seen a lot more and more demand and and does that happen at the chain level or you know I kind of mentioned this on the previous panel as well, this assetric view of the world. Can you integrate that directly into the stable coins themselves? You know, I'm I'm seeing more of that with uh like RWAS.

60. 21:53

    you have KYC baked in a little bit, compliance being the key word there. But, uh, yeah, when it when it comes to, you know, some of these these privacy elements, do you see that integrating at the asset level, the stablecoin level, or more so the chain level?

61. 22:05

    I mean, I'm extremely biased here, but I'll I'll plug near just here is uh is um I mean, I think it's the challenge is that currently there's actually assets across mo like many different chains that uh are doing very well. Uh, which is a great state of the world depending on your view. Um the challenge then is like it's actually kind of difficult if a business has to operate across multiple chains then if you have single chain privacy that starts to become really difficult. So the way we've done

62. 22:30

    it because our whole view of the world is like we just care that you're using near intents which actually connects a bunch a bunch of chains together. We're able to implement privacy at like at the near intense level. So you can move between these assets on different chains while staying within the private environment and keep that whole interaction private.

63. 22:47

    So everything on near intense is private. everything on your intents is private. You have to right now you have to opt into it but eventually that'll be default. You can opt out of course there are some actually for regulatory reasons there are some uh institutions in particular that don't want privacy but uh the average business seems to want it yet.

64. 23:04

    Um few minutes left here maybe just zooming out a little bit. I'm curious to get you know you know your your long view here on you know everyone's long view here. Um, there's been a few smart people that have said, you know, AI is the uh the saving grace of crypto. Bless you. Uh, I'm just curious if you guys see this world, too. Like, you know, we obviously had we had we've had a lot of problems here

65. 23:28

    with crypto. It feels like now we have AI agents. Are are they going to become the primary users of these tokens? I see Nigel's wheels spinning. I I can tell you've got something cooking. I think it's a it's a more um like logical form factor um for for machines to use stable coins and you know uh I guess to to Ben's point earlier where like a lot of the activity and kind of the rules of the road are dictated in code. It just seems to make a lot more sense. The reason why

66. 24:09

    I'm like hesitant a little bit is I also don't think um AI should we should be viewing as an industry AI as it's going to like swoop in and only the machines are going to use crypto like this should not be mutually exclusive from us onboarding the next billion people on chain as well. So my answer would be both.

67. 24:32

    I I completely agree with that. Um, and so I don't think AI is going to be crypto's saving grace. I think that a lot of smart people in crypto have been preaching for a long time that crypto is a more capital efficient system. And if you're a rational actor, you should be using it over the traditional financial rails. And AI by all means should be rational. And so if AI agents are

68. 24:54

    choosing to use crypto because it is a better system, then that's validating what people have said previously. And then it should usher in the next wave of true adoption. I think I mean just to build on that I think it it marries together really well right so digital assets AI agentic like it's all programmable you can put you know limitations in right you made the payment you are liable as you know again

69. 25:19

    going back to the office outside of paying right you made the payment you are liable if an agent steps outside of it right you made the payment you are liable if an agent steps outside of its parameters market that it can't operate which you necessarily haven't agreed with or is in a market that it can't operate and so on. Who's liable? Right?

70. 25:40

    And I see that there's going to be a whole other world of and then somebody like, well, you're the human behind your agent. You told it what to do. And but I think that's going to be a bit of a headache in the future, right? Pretty quickly, I think, but I think that's going to be a bit of a headache in the future.

71. 25:57

    And then it's a question of if it's then you're in court and it's like, what the hell? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Then you're paying an agent to represent you in court. It's like, what the hell? Like, yeah. Yeah. Then you're paying an agent to represent you in court. It's like, what the hell? Like, well said. These are agent to represent you in court. It's like, what the hell? Like, well said. These are these are Oh, yeah.

72. 26:18

    represent you in court. It's like, what the hell? Like, well said. These are these are Oh, yeah. Kendall. I mean, not much sad other than like agents are definitely eating everything. They'll eat crypto, too. Crypto would have been fine without agents. I don't think it's a saving grace. it would have been fine, but agents are eating everything. Thus, like eventually the average user of crypto will for sure be an agent and maybe pretty quickly.

73. 26:39

    Um, we got a minute left. Any questions from the audience? You guys curious about anything that we haven't covered so far? All right. If not, I've got a question for you guys. How who is currently getting paid in stable coins? Like from their business, not receiving fiat, but you you're receiving stable coins.

74. 27:00

    I see one hand. Guys, that's an issue, isn't it? From like Yeah. I mean, we're at a crypto event like, you know, there's tons of stable coins. What it feels and and I think we almost everyone on the panel mentioned, you know, payroll as like the catalyst for stable coin payments. We've obviously got a lot of work to do. It feels very early. I mean, who's doing this? It feels very important. How do we get this off of one? Right? We're not at zero. We got one the guy in the orange shirt. Shout out to that guy.

75. 27:34

    We um so so we work with deal, right? So we we powered deal, right? So the employment of record business and they are paying their contractors in stablecoin. Like the problem is and I said this on a panel earlier, right? We are not there with the infrastructure yet. So you can get paid in stable coin but like could you pay your rent in stablecoin? Could you pay your mortgage in stable coin? Unless you have a stable coin back card which you can then like work and it can be a little bit expensive like the infrastructure is just not there to offramp that stable

76. 28:00

    coin one to one you get paid in it but then what do you do with it right so I think once we've built that infrastructure it'll be easier and everybody will get paid yeah I mean we built out all these onchain tools and it feels like we've actually built maybe like too far ahead right but we haven't thought like you know we've got to get these stable coins into the people's hands you know from

77. 28:16

    the onset there I think there's there are a lot of people like we pay contractors in stable coins um And there are So you raise your you didn't raise your hand Kendall. Well, I don't pay your contract because they're non US, right? And like that's the reason, right? It's like and I mean we're not US company, but um it's like it's easy for international payments, right? Um so yeah, I mean I think that's there there are a lot of people in crypto particularly, you know,

78. 28:40

    if if a if a company is operating like they have contractors all over the globe, which which is very common, then there are a lot of crypto companies paying people in stable coins. I think the point is like crypto people are willing to get paid in stable coins because they know how to offramp like they have exchange accounts. Like for them they're they're fine with the friction whereas like the average person who's working in a normal company that doesn't have anything to do with crypto for them the friction that is a problem.

79. 29:04

    Like if a company says hey we're going to pay you in stable coins like what that's horrible like why are you going to do that to me? And that's that's the missing piece. Yeah. And then there's this whole rabbit hole of tokenized deposits, which you know, maybe could help help on that front, but we we won't get into that today. Guys, give it up for our panelists. Thank you so much.