HONG KONG, March 12, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — 2025 is a year where crypto truly went mainstream. Regulatory clarity around ETFs, compliant distribution channels, and the emergence of publicly listed crypto-native companies collectively lowered the friction between crypto and the real economy. Crypto became something institutions, enterprises, and everyday users could access, hold, and use at scale.

Against this backdrop, a deeper shift was also underway: AI systems began moving from tools to participants. As intelligence started to automate decisions, execute tasks, and interact continuously with digital services, the question was no longer what AI can do, but how value moves when AI acts.

This is the context in which AEON’s 2025 journey unfolded.

Establishing AEON as the Foundation of the AI Economy

In 2025, AEON firmly established its position as the foundational payment infrastructure built for the new AI economy. As production relations on the internet evolved, from attention-driven interactions to call-based, autonomous execution, AEON focused on building the financial infrastructure required for this new paradigm.

When the x402 wave captured industry attention, AEON was already at the forefront. As one of the earliest supporters of the x402 standard and an official partner within Coinbase‘s ecosystem, AEON helped push AI payments from theory into practice. Rather than treating x402 as a trend, AEON treated it as an early signal of a structural shift: AI agents would need native payment infrastructure to operate economically.

Beyond the Coinbase ecosystem, AEON expanded AI payments into the BNB Chain ecosystem by launching the x402 Facilitator on BNB Chain. This move extended agentic payments into a broader, high-throughput environment, reinforcing AEON’s commitment to building payment infrastructure that works across ecosystems rather than being confined to a single network.

At the protocol level, AEON made meaningful technical progress toward AI-native finance. By building on x402, introducing Know Your Agent (KYA), and integrating ERC-8004, AEON enabled verifiable agent identity and authorization in payment flows. In parallel, AEON introduced on-chain feedback and service reputation mechanisms through ERC-8004. This allows high-quality agents and service providers to naturally stand out as AI economy scales.

Real Usage, Real Scale

By 2025, AEON had processed over 5.7M transactions and more than $263 million in total volume, serving 1.8 million users worldwide, with 80k new users added in the past month alone.

These transactions are not abstract metrics. They include live AI-to-merchant payments via QR scans in real-world retail environments, demonstrating early but tangible adoption of AI-driven commerce at scale. This is what the AI economy looks like in its early stages—not theoretical, but observable, measurable, and growing.

Expanding Web3 Mobile Payments in the Real World

In 2025, AEON significantly expanded its Web3 mobile payment footprint across real-world scenarios. AEON Pay launched in the Philippines, Nigeria, Mexico, Brazil, Georgia, and Peru, enabling users to pay via scan-to-pay or merchant bank transfers using local payment standards. This localization-first approach ensured crypto payments worked seamlessly within existing financial habits.

Through these efforts, AEON connected over 50 million merchants globally, spanning both household brands such as McDonald’s, KFC, Burger King, and UNIQLO, as well as countless local grocery stores, cafés, and neighborhood businesses.

AEON Pay also became deeply integrated across the Web3 ecosystem, launching within leading wallets and platforms including Binance Wallet, OKX Wallet, Bitget Wallet, Solana Pay, TokenPocket, TonKeeper, and OKX Pay, while powering scan-to-pay capabilities for top exchanges such as KuCoin, Bybit, and Bitget Wallet. Together, these efforts positioned AEON as one of the most widely deployed crypto payment networks bridging Web3 and real-world commerce today.

A Growing Network of Partners

AEON’s ecosystem expanded rapidly in 2025, anchored by 500+ partnerships with some of the most influential organizations across crypto, payments, and infrastructure. By working closely with industry leaders such as BNB Chain, Ripple, Stable, United Stables, TON, Stellar, Binance Wallet, Bitget Wallet, Bybit and others, AEON embedded its payment layer into the core pathways where digital value already flows.

Through these integrations, users can spend partner tokens on everyday purchases, from retail and dining to local services, while merchants receive seamless settlement through AEON’s global payment infrastructure supported by licensed partners. For partners, joining the AEON ecosystem unlocks the next phase of adoption, where value moves not only between users and protocols, but also between AI agents, digital services, and real-world merchants, all on a shared payment layer.

Real-World Recognition and Industry Presence

AEON’s work in 2025 was recognized across the industry. The team was selected for BNB Chain’s Most Valuable Builder (MVB) Season 10, joining a cohort of standout builders chosen from over 500 applicants to shape the next era of Web3.

AEON also reached the Top 5 finalists at the NEXUS Startup Competition at Token2049, the world’s largest crypto startup challenge. During the event, CTO Leo presented AEON as the crypto payment infrastructure for agentic commerce, highlighting how AEON enables AI agents to make secure, efficient payments to millions of merchants worldwide.

Throughout the year, AEON maintained a strong presence across global conferences, panels, and speaking engagements, sharing its vision both online and offline. The team’s footprint spanned Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Brazil, New York, Boston, Korea, and beyond, consistently contributing to conversations around AI, crypto, and the future of economic infrastructure.

A Growing Global Community

None of this would be possible without the community. In 2025, AEON’s community grew to over 120,000 members worldwide. The launch of AEON’s Ambassador Program brought thousands of contributors into the ecosystem, including builders, educators, creators, and advocates who move forward alongside AEON, helping shape and share the vision of an AI-native financial future.

Looking Ahead

2025 was the year AEON moved from proving concepts to establishing foundations. As AI continues to reshape how value is created and exchanged, the need for a payment infrastructure built specifically for this new economy will only grow.

AEON enters the next chapter not just as a product, but as infrastructure, powering the economic flows of an internet where intelligence itself becomes an economic actor.

And this is only the beginning.

About AEON

AEON is the foundational payment infrastructure built for the new AI economy. By pioneering support for emerging AI payment standards like x402 and ERC-8004, AEON is actively reshaping the internet’s production relations. By 2025, its AI payment and Web3 Mobile Payment solutions AEON Pay have processed 5.7M transactions with $263M+ in volume across 50M real-world merchants in Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

With the massive shift from the attention economy to the call-based economy, AEON provides the financial backbone required to power the next-gen agentic commerce at scale, and accelerate real-world adoption of crypto and AI.

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