Agentic commerce refers to the use of AI agents as economic actors that participate in commercial marketplaces. As these AI agent interfaces increasingly become the go-to method for research and discovery, reducing the friction to checkout will be inevitable, prompting AI agent companies to explore monetization through transaction fees, commissions, affiliates and more.
Then, with more and more agentic economic activity, these AI agent companies will look deeper into the financial infrastructure stack for ways to increase their bottom line. In this article, we'll explore why traditional payment rails aren't built for the needs of agentic commerce today and how stablecoins allow AI agent companies to capture significantly more value from their customers.
Traditional Payment Rails Fall Short for AI Agent Companies
Traditional payment rails aren't built for the needs of AI agent companies who value cost, speed and user experience. Credit cards charge 2-3% fees, settlement takes days, and anti-fraud systems like CAPTCHA create expensive and annoying friction points. For these reasons, AI agent companies need agent-native financial rails that are optimized for API-first, autonomous transactions.
Stablecoins are The Best Payment Rails for Agentic Commerce
The best solution for AI agent companies to capture the most value out of the commerce that happens within their ecosystems is stablecoins. Stablecoins offer lower fees (as low as 0.1% per transaction), faster settlements (minutes instead of days), global access, programmability and more. The lower fees alone will provide significant cost savings for AI agent companies.
We've already seen glimpses into the future of agentic commerce on Windsurf, Claude and Eleven Labs where stablecoins simply work invisibly in the background. Large companies from PayPal to Stripe understand that the future of commerce is agentic and have both made major plays in stablecoins.
The Agentic Finance Platform for AI Agent Companies
Crossmint's Agentic Finance platform enables AI agent companies to empower agents with the tools to operate on stablecoin rails:
- AI Agent Wallets: Non-custodial wallets with programmable guardrails that enable agents to manage assets securely, maintain accountability through public transaction records, and operate within configured spending limits.
- GOAT SDK: An open-source library offering 250+ onchain actions across 40+ blockchains, allowing agents to send stablecoins, swap tokens, and create DeFi positions with MIT license and support for major frameworks.
- World Store: An API service giving agents access to over 1 billion SKUs of real-world goods and services, with support for payments using major tokens across 40+ chains.
- Credentials: Tools to authorize agents to act on users' behalf securely.
If you’re an AI agent company and want to learn more, reach out to us here!
