Stripe for Agens: Agent investment map from protocol anchor to payment ecology

By Jacob Zhao

Smart Business(AGENTIC COMMERCE) refers to a full-process business system in which the service discovery, credibility judgement, order generation, payment authorization and final settlement are done by AI smart bodies. It is no longer dependent on human step-by-step operation or information input, but rather on the automatic collaboration, filing, payment and performance of intelligent bodies across platforms and systems, thus forming a commercial closed loop (M2M Company) between machines and machines。

In the field of encryption, the most practical applications are currently focused onStable currency paymentsandDeFiI don't know. Thus, in the process of integrating Crypto with AI, the two most valuable paths are: in the short term, depending on the existing maturity of the DeFi protocolAgentFiand the medium- and long-term agreements around stable currency settlement, reliance on ACP/AP2/x402/ERC-8004Agent PaymentI don't know。

In the short term, smart business (Agentic Commerce) is constrained by such factors as agreement maturity, regulatory differences, and commercial user acceptance, making it difficult to scale quickly; however, in the long run, payments are the bottom anchor of all commercial closed rings, with smart business having the greatest long-term value。

The real-world business network is the biggest value scenario in the smart business system. No matter how AI Agent evolvesTraditional French currency payment systems (Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, bank transfers)With fast-growingStable currency system (USDC, x 402)There will be long-term co-existence, which together will form the base of the smarts business。

Real world traders — from electricians, subscriptions, SaaS to travel, content payments and enterprise procurement — carry trillions of dollars in class requirements and are also sources of core values for AI Agent's automatic pricing, renewal and procurement. In the short term, mainstream consumption and enterprise procurement will continueLong-term dominance of traditional French-currency payment systemsI don't know。

The central obstacle to the size of a stable currency in real business is not technology, but technologyREGULATION (KYC/AML, TAX, CONSUMER PROTECTION), ACCOUNTANCY BY BUSINESS (STABLE CURRENCY FOR ILLICIT PAYMENTS)andLack of dispute resolution mechanisms arising from irreversible paymentsI don't know. As a result of these structural constraints, the stabilization currency will have short-term difficulties in accessing highly regulated sectors such as health, aviation, electricity, government, utilities, which will be concentrated in the fieldDigital content, cross-border payments, Web3 Original Services and Machine Economy (M2M/Iot/Agent)This is the first window of opportunity for business-level breakthroughs for the original Web3 intelligents。

However, the institutionalization of regulation in 2025 is advancing rapidly: the United States Stabilisation Currency Act has achieved bipartisan consensus, Hong Kong and Singapore have a framework for depositing currency licences, EU MiCA has entered into force, and Stripe supports USDC and PayPal to launch PYUSD. Clarifying regulatory structures means that the currency of stability is being accepted into the mainstream financial system, opening up policy space for future cross-border settlements, B2B procurement and the machine economy。

The core of intelligent commerce is not to replace one payment track with the other, but to replace it with one. "Next order - Authorization - PaymentThe executive body handed over to AI Agent the traditional system of payment of French currency (AP2, certificate of authorization, identity compliance) and the system of stable currency (x402, CCTP, smart contract settlement). It is neither a zero-sum contest for a French currency vs a stable currency, nor an alternative narrative for a single track, but a structural opportunity to expand both sides’ capabilities simultaneously: French currency payments continue to support human commerce, and stable currency payments accelerate the scenes of machine origin and chain origin, which complement each other and become a twin engine of the intelligent economy。

The comptoir of smart commercials (Agentic Commerce) consists of six tiers, forming a complete machine commercial chain from “capability discovery” to “payment delivery”。A2A CatalogandMCP RegistryIt's the ability to find outERC-804(b) Provide chain-based authentication of identity and reputationACPandAP2Separately assume structured orders and authorizations; payment levels areTRADITIONAL FRENCH TRACK (AP2)andstabilized currency track (x402)Parallel composition; no uniform criteria exist for the level of delivery。

• Discovery Layer(Discovery Layer): Solve "Agent how to find and understand the availability of services." The AI side builds a standardized capability directory via A2A Catalog and MCP Registry; Web3 provides a searchable identity guide based on ERC-804. The floor is the entrance to the entire comptoir。

• Trust Level(Trust Layer): Answer “Is the other party credible or not”. There are no common standards on the side of AI, and Web3 is a key advantage of Web3 by building a unified framework for authentication of identity, reputation and execution records through ERC-804。

• Lower Single Layer(Ordering Layer): Responsible for “how orders are expressed and verified”. The ACP (OpenAI x Strike) provides structured descriptions of goods, prices and settlements to ensure that merchants can perform. Because of the difficulty of expressing the real world business compact on the chain, the layer is largely dominated by Web2。

• Delegation Layer(Authorization Layer): Dealing with “Agent is legally authorized by the user”. AP2 Attaching intent, confirmation and payment authorization to the real identity system by authenticating documents. Web3 signatures are not yet legally valid and therefore cannot be held responsible for contracts and compliance at that level。

• Payment Layer(Payment Layer): Decides on “what track payment is made”. AP2 Covers traditional payment networks such as cards and banks; x 402 provides the original API payment interface in stable currency, allowing assets such as USDC to be embedded in automated calls. The two tracks form functional complementarities here。

• Delivery Layer(Fulfillment Layer): Answer “How to secure the delivery of content upon payment”. There is currently no uniform agreement: the real world relies on commercial systems for delivery and Web3's encrypted access controls have not yet resulted in cross-ecological standards. This layer remains the largest gap in the comptoir and is most likely to give birth to the next generation of basic agreements。

Business around smart bodiesService discovery, trust judgement, structured billing, payment authorization and final settlementThe five key links, Google, Anthropic, OpenAi, Stripe, Etheum, Coinbase, and others, have all come up with a bottom-up agreement at the respective point, thus building the next generation togetherAgentic Corporation Core DealerI don't know。

A2A is an open-source agreement initiated by Google and donated to Linux Foundation to provide a common standard for communication and collaboration for AI Agents, which are built on different suppliers and frameworks. A2A Based on HTTP + JSON-RPC, secure, structured exchange of information and tasks, enabling Agents to engage in multiple rounds of dialogue, collaborative decision-making, task decomposition and state management in original ways. Its core objective is to build an "inter-intelligence Internet" so that any A2A compatible Agent can be automatically detected, called and combined, thus forming a distributed Agent network across platforms and organizations。

MCP, launched by Anthropic, is an open protocol linking LLM/Agents to external systems, focusing on the harmonization of tools and data access interfaces. It abstracts databases, file systems, remote API and proprietary tools into standardized resources, enabling Agent to access external capabilities in a secure, controlled and auditable manner. MCP design emphasizes low integration costs and high scalability: only one docking by developers allows Agent to use the entire tool ecology. MCP has now been adopted by many head AI manufacturers as the factual criterion for interactivity。

MCP Concerned about "Agent How to Use Tools"- Provide a unified and secure external resource access capability for models (e.g. database, API, file systems, etc.) to standardize interactivity between ant-tool / angent-data。

A2A solves how "Agent works with other Agent"• Establishment of primary communication standards for cross-producer, cross-frame smarts, supporting multi-wheel dialogue, task decomposition, state management and long-life implementation, is the basic interoperability layer between intelligents。

ACP (Agentic Common Production) is the Open List (Apache 2.0) standard proposed by OpenAI and Stripe to create a structured process for buyers-AI Agent-businessers that can be understood directly by machines. The agreement covers commodity information, price and terms verification, settlement logic and transfer of payment vouchers, enabling AI to initiate purchases safely on behalf of users without becoming a business。

The core design is: AI to use the commercial closing interface in a standardized manner, while the business retains full commercial and legal control. Through structured orders (JSON Schema / OpenAPI), secure payment tokens (Stripe Shared Payment Token), compatible with existing electrician backstages, and support for RET and MCP dissemination capabilities, businesses can access the AI shopping ecology without the need to modify the system. Current ACP usedChatGPT Industrial CheckoutAs the payment infrastructure available for early deployment。

AP2 BYGoogleThe Open Standards, launched by the Coalition of Payment Networks and the Science and Technology Corporation, aims to:AI Agent-led paymentsEstablish harmonized, compliance and auditable processes. It binds the user's intention to pay, the scope of the authorization and the status of compliance by encrypted digital authorization, providing verifiable evidence of “who is paying for whom” for businesses, payment agencies and regulators。

AP2 Designed as a “Payment-Agnostic” principle, while supporting encrypted payment tracks such as credit cards, bank transfers, real-time payments and extended access to stable currency by x 402. Throughout the Agenic Corporation, AP2 is not responsible for the specific goods and the particulars of the lower orders, but rather provides the general Agent payment authorization framework for various payment channels。

ERC-8004 was developed by the MetaMask, the Etheleum Foundation, Google and Coinbase as a joint initiative to construct the `Ai Agendas'Cross-platform, verifiable, without trustThe identity and credibility system, which consists of three parts of the chain:

• Identity Registry: Casting a NFT-like chain identity for each Agent can be linked to cross-platform information such as MCP / A2A endpoints, ENS/DID, wallets, etc。

• ReputationStandardized records of ratings, feedback and behavioural signals that enable the historical performance of Agent to be audited, aggregated and combined。

• I'm sorry: Support certification mechanisms such as status re-execution, zkML, TEE to provide verifiable execution records for high value missions。

The identity, credibility and behaviour of ERC-804Agent are linked to the evidence of the identity, reputation and behaviour of the individualDiscoverable, unalterable, verifiable base of trust across the platformWeb3 is an important infrastructure for an open, credible AI economy. The ERC-8004 is at the Review stage, which means that the standards are generally stable and achievable, but are still being widely consulted and have not yet been finalized。

x402 is the Open Payment Standard (Apache-2.0) proposed by Coinbase, which transforms the long-term idle HTTP 402 Payment Required into a programmable chain payment handshake that allows API and AI Agent to achieve without account numbers, credit cards, and API KeyDe-accounting, no friction, on demandThe chain settles。

LEGEND: HTTP 402 PAYMENT WORKFLOW

Source: Jay Yu@Pantala Capital

Core mechanisms:x402 protocols revive the early HTTP 402 status code from the Internet. Its work flows to:

• Requests and consultations: Client (Agent) initiate request - > Service returns 402 status code and payment parameters (e. g. amount, receiving address)。

• Self-payment: Agent signs transactions locally and broadcasts them (usually USDC, etc.) without manual intervention。

• Validation and delivery: The immediate release of resources after the transaction on the service end or third-party “Facilitator” certification chain。

x402 introducedFacilitator (Facilitator) roleas the middle of the connection between Web2 API and the Web3 settlement layer. Facilitator handles complex chain validation and settlement logic, allowing traditional developers to monetize API with little code, without the service provider having to run nodes, manage signatures or broadcast transactions and relying on the interface provided by Facilitator to complete the chain payment processing. Now the most mature Facilitator achieves byCoinbase Developer PlatformProvision。

technical advantages of x 402It is: supporting micropayments up to 1 cents low in the chain, breaking the limitations of the traditional payment gateway that cannot be handled by small calls of high frequency (HF) in the AI scenario; completely removing accounts, KYC and API Key so that AI can independently complete M2M payments closed; and achieving a Gas-free USDC-authorized payment through EIP-3009, which is compatible with the original Base and Solana, with multi-chain scalability。

Based on an introduction to the Core House of Agreements, the table below summarizes the positioning, core competencies, key constraints and maturity assessments at all levels, which provide a clear structured perspective for building a cross-platform, implementable and affordable smart economy。

Web3 of Current Smart Commerce can be divided into three layers:

• OPERATIONAL PAYMENT SYSTEM LAYER (L3)These include projects such as Skyfire, Payman, Catena Labs, Nevermined, which provide payment envelopes, SDK integration, scale and authority governance, human approval and compliance access, and, to varying degrees, interface with traditional financial tracks (banks, card organizations, PSP, KYC/KYB) to build bridges between payment operations and machine economy。

• ORIGINAL PAYMENT AGREEMENT LAYER (L2)It consists of agreements such as x402, Virtual ACP and its ecological projects, which are responsible for claims for fees, payment certification and chain settlement, which are at the heart of real automation and end-to-end liquidation in the current Agent economy. x402 Provide the original M2M/A2A capacity to pay without reliance on banks, card organizations and payment service providers。

• INFRASTRUCTURE LEVEL (L1), including Etheleum, Base, Solana and Kite AI, provide a secure base for the implementation of the payment and identity system along the chain, the key system, MPC/AA and the Runtume technical vault。

Skyfire, with KYA + Pay at its core, abstracts "Identification + Payment Authorization" as an AI-available JWT voucher, providing a verifiable automated access and deduction capability for websites, API, MCP services. The system automatically generates Buyer/ SellerAgent and hosting wallets for users to support card, bank and USDC fulls。

At the system level, Skyfire generates Buyer/SellerAgent and hosting wallets for each user to support filling balances through cards, banks and USDC. The greatest advantage is completeCompatibility Web2(JWT/JWKS, WAF, API Gateway, directly available) may provide “identified automatic pay access” for content sites, data API, tool classes SaaS。

Skyfire is a realistic mid-level Agent Payment, but identity and asset hosting are both central options。

Payman provides four types of capacity: Wallet, Payee, Polycy, Approval, to build a manageable, auditable “fund authority” for AI. AI can enforce real payments, but all financial actions must meet user-set levels, strategies and approval rules. The core interface is through the Payman.ask() natural language interface, which is responsible for the interpretation of intent, validation strategy and execution of payments。

The key value of Payman is, "AI can move money, but never overstep power." Migration of enterprise-level fund management to the AI environment: automatic payroll, reimbursement, vendor payments, bulk transfers, etc., can be accomplished within clearly defined limits of competence. Payman Financial Automation within Enterprises and Teams (Salary, Claims, Vendor Payments, etc.)Controlled fund governance level, does not attempt to construct an open Agent-to-Agent payment protocol。

Catena, using AI-Native financial institutions (hosting, clearing, wind control, KYA) as the commercial layer, constructs the Agent Unified Identity Agreement (ACK-ID) and the Agent-native Payment Agreement (ACK-Pay) as the standard layer for Ack (Agent Company Kit). The goal is to fill the missing verifiable identification, authorization chain and automated payment standards in the machine economy。

ACK-ID is based on DD/VC establishing the chain of ownership, delegation of authority for Agent; ACK-Pay defines payment requests decoupling with the bottom clearing network (USDC, Bank, Arc) and verifiable receipt formats. Catena emphasizes long-term cross-ecological interoperability, with a role closer to the “TLS/EMV layer of the Agent economy”, with a high degree of standardization and a clear vision。

The Nevermined Focus AI usage-based economic model, which provides Access Control, Metering, Credits System and Usage Logs for automated measurement, sub-counting, sub-counting and auditing. Users can automatically verify usages, deductions and generate auditable logs on every API call via Stripe or USDC charge。

Its core value lies in supporting real-time micro-payments by sub-cent and automated settlement by Agent-to-Agent, so that data purchases, API calls, workflow movements, etc. can be run on a “call-on-call” basis. Nevermined did not build a new payment track, but rather a measurement/calculation layer over payments: short-term promotion of the commercialization of AI SaaS, medium-term support of A2A marketplace, and long-term potential for micropayments in the machine economy。

Skyfire, Payman, Catena Labs, Nevermined are operating payment levels that require, to varying degrees, interlocking banks, card organizations, PSPs and KYC/KYB, but their true value is not in “access to French currency”, but rather in addressing the original needs of machines that traditional finance cannot cover — identity mapping, authority governance, procedural controls and subcounting。

• Skyfire (payment gateway)_Other Organiser

• Payman (financial governance)POLICY, SCOPE, AUTHORITY AND APPROVAL (AI CAN SPEND BUT NOT EXCEED AUTHORITY)

• Catena Labs (financial infrastructure): BANKING SYSTEM INTEGRATION, CONSTRUCTED THROUGH KYA, HOSTING AND LIQUIDATION SERVICES (AI COMPLIANCE BANK)

• Nevermined (Cashboard): only measures and charges are paid above; payments depend on Stripe/USDC。

This is not the casex402 is at a lower level, the only original payment agreement that does not depend on banks, card organizations and PSPThe chain of deductions and settlements can be completed directly through the 402 workflow. When the Skyfire, Payman, and Nevermined supersystems can call x402 as a clearing track, thus providing Agent with a real meaningM2M / A2A AUTOMATION PRIMARY PAYMENT CLOSED RINGI don't know。

x402 Native payment ecology can be divided into four levels: client (Clint), service (Server), payment execution (Facilitators) and block chain settlement。ClientResponsible for enabling Agent or applications to initiate payment requestsServiceAPI services, such as data, reasoning or storage, are provided to Agent on a sequential basis; payment of the completion chain deduction, validation and settlement of the enforcement layer is the core implementation engine for the entire processBlock chain settlement layerTake the final token deduction and confirm it on the chain to make unalterable payments available。

LEGEND: X402 PAYMENT STREAM

source: white paper x402

in the x402 payment systemFacilitator is the only real payer in the enforcement chainResponsible for certifying payment authorizations, submitting and tracking transactions along the chain and generating auditable clearance certificates, while processing re-opening, overtime, multi-chain compatibility and underlying compliance checks. Unlike Client SDK (Payers) and API (Sellers), which only deal with HTTP requests, it is the final clearing export of all M2M/A2A transactions, with access to traffic and settlement fees, and is therefore at the value capture core of the Agent economy, with the greatest market interest。

The reality, however, is that most projects remain in the testing network or small-scale Demo, which is essentially a light “pay implementer” with a clear low threshold and high homogenization characteristic of the lack of moats in key capacities such as identity, billing, wind control, multi-chain steady state processing, etc. As the ecology matures, Facilitator will have a winner-take-all pattern: the head agency with the advantage of stability and compliance (e.g. Coinbase) has a strong lead base. In the long term, x402 is still an interface layer, unable to carry core values, and truly competitive on a continuous basis is the ability to build an integrated platform for an identity, billing, wind control and compliance system based on settlement capabilities。

The Ace of Virtualgent Company Protocol (ACP)PROVIDES A COMMON SET OF CRITERIA FOR BUSINESS INTERACTION FOR AUTONOMY AI, WHICH IS ADOPTEDREQUATOR:The four-stage process allows independent intelligent bodies to request services in a secure and verifiable manner, negotiate terms, complete transactions and undergo quality assessment. ACP uses block chains as a credible executive layer to ensure that interactive processes are auditable and non-mutilable and that sustainable economic activities can be carried out by introducing Evaluator Argentinas to create incentive-driven systems of credibility so that the interstellar and independent profession Agent can form an “autonomous business” without central coordination. At present, the ACP is still in its early stages, with a limited ecological scale, more like an exploration of the “business interaction criteria for multi-smarts”。

Major common public chains such as Estherum, Base (EVM) and Solana provide Agent with the core implementation environment, account systems, status machines, safety and settlement base, with mature account models, stable currency ecology and a broad development base。

Kite AI is representative 'Argentina Native L1Infrastructure, specially designed for intelligent persons for the lowest level of execution of payment, identity and authority. Its core is based on the SPACE framework (stable currency origin, programmable constraints, proxy priority certification, compliance audit, economically viable micropayments) and is isolated by the three-tier system of key-keys for Root→Agent→SESSion; and the construction of the “Agent Native Pay Railway” in conjunction with the optimized state route, which puts costs at $0.000001, delayed control at 100 milliseconds, making API-level HF micropayments feasible. As a generic executive level, Kite is upperformed by x 402, Google A2A, Anthropic MCP, downperformed by OAuth 2.1, with the target being the unified Agent payment and identification base connecting Web2 to Web3。

The AisaNet integration x 402 and L402 (Lightning Labs developed 402 payment agreement standards based on the Lightning Network) agreements as a micro-payment and settlement layer for AI Agents to support high-frequency transactions, cross-agreement call coordination, settlement path selection and trade routes, enabling Agens to complete cross-service, cross-chain automatic payments without understanding the underlying complexities。

Smart Commerce is the creation of a new machine-led economic order. It is not as simple as an “AI automatic listing”, but rather a re-construction across the main chain: how services are discovered, how credibility is built, how orders are expressed, how authority is delegated, how value is liquidated, and who bears the burden of the dispute. The emergence of A2A, MCP, ACP, AP2, ERC-8004 and x402 standardizes the “commercial closed circle between machines”。

Along this evolutionary path, the future payment infrastructure will be divided into two parallel tracks: one based on the traditional monetary logicOperational governance trackthe other one is based on the 402 protocolNative settlement trackI don't know. The value of the two is not the same。

We believe that the future will come"Francier system" parallels the "stabilized currency system"The former underpins mainstream human commerce, while the latter carries high-frequency, cross-border, micro-paying scenes that are home to machines and chain. The role of Web3 is not to replace traditional payments, but to provide for the Age of AgeIdentification, programmable liquidation and global stability currencyThe bottom capacity. Ultimately, smart commerce is not limited to payment optimization, but rather is a re-establishment of the machine economic order. When billions of microtrades are automatically completed by Agent backstage, those agreements and companies that spearhead the ability to provide trust, coordination and optimization will become central to the next generation of global business infrastructure。