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The emerging field of ‘agentic commerce’, where AI agents use blockchain-based micropayments to pay for data and services on behalf of users, is poised for rapid growth in the coming year. Recent developments, including a new open-source wallet standard and the composability of AI language models, suggest this new frontier of shopping could arrive sooner than expected and add tens of millions of ordinary consumers to the API economy.
Why it matters
Agentic commerce has the potential to fundamentally change how people access and pay for digital content and services. By empowering AI agents to handle micropayments, it could open up a vast new market of users beyond just developers, including salespeople, financial analysts, and others who need on-demand access to premium data. However, there are concerns that large tech companies may try to create walled gardens, limiting the open and decentralized vision of agentic commerce.
The details
Startups like AgentCash are building services to help AI agents pay for APIs and other data using blockchain-based micropayments. The key enabler is the instant settlement and low per-transaction costs of blockchains, which have struggled to gain traction for micropayments in the past. But the rise of AI commerce is poised to add tens of millions of new users to the API economy. For example, salespeople could use AI agents to gather data on leads, rather than relying on expensive software subscriptions. A new open-source wallet standard from major crypto and payment players will also help reduce friction for these AI-powered transactions.
- In the past month, several new developments have accelerated the potential for agentic commerce.
- Last week, a new open-source wallet standard for AI agents was announced as a joint effort from MoonPay, the Ethereum Foundation, Coinbase, PayPal, Ripple, and the Solana Foundation.
- Experts predict agentic commerce could see 1000% growth by the end of 2026 to prove the viability of the model.
The players
Sam Ragsdale
The founder of startup AgentCash, which is building a service to help AI agents pay for premium APIs and data using blockchain-based micropayments.
Guy Wuollet
A crypto investor at a16z who believes the composability of AI language models will make it easier to adopt new technological standards in agentic commerce.
Haseeb Qureshi
A partner at Dragonfly Capital who cautions that while agentic commerce will be huge, it will take years for adoption to move beyond early adopters.
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What they’re saying
“I think having a single, unifying standard is probably less important today than it was 25 or 30 years ago, because LLMs are so good at understanding syntax and writing software… I’m pretty optimistic that any software that exposes APIs will be very composable in the future.”
— Guy Wuollet, Crypto investor, a16z
“Eventually, agentic commerce will be a ‘knife fight’ as big companies put their thumb on the scale for a standard that favors them—but for now everyone is on the page to scale the industry 1000x by end of year to prove it’s viable.”
— Sam Ragsdale, Founder, AgentCash
What’s next
Experts predict the agentic commerce industry could see 1000% growth by the end of 2026 as companies work to prove the viability of the model and overcome potential challenges from large tech firms trying to create walled gardens.
The takeaway
The rise of AI-powered agentic commerce, enabled by blockchain-based micropayments, could fundamentally reshape how people access and pay for digital content and services. While there are still hurdles to overcome, the rapid pace of innovation and the composability of AI suggest this new frontier of shopping may arrive sooner than expected.
