Introduction: Finance Has a New User, and It Is Not Human
By 2034, agentic AI is expected to become a $196.6 billion market, with finance emerging as a key use case. This introduces a completely new participant in the financial ecosystem: AI agents.
They can operate continuously, make decisions, and execute transactions without much human intervention. Yet today’s financial infrastructure was built around human-led interactions, where users manually authenticate, approve, and intervene at each step.
As finance moves toward a future shaped by agentic AI, a mismatch is emerging between how financial systems operate today and what AI agents will require. Banks and institutions are already facing increasing pressure to develop new capabilities to support the next generation of agentic finance.
The challenge is significant, but a solution already exists. Digital asset infrastructure provides the foundational building blocks needed for agentic finance.
Current Financial Infrastructure is not Compatible
Today’s financial infrastructure was built for humans, centred on bank accounts, cards and processes that rely on manual oversight. Therefore, participation has always required human involvement in areas such as identity verification, transaction approval and dispute resolution. AI agents do not necessarily meet all these conditions, limiting their ability to participate on current financial rails.
The cost of leaving this gap unresolved is the risk of missing a new user class of AI agents. Agentic commerce alone, where AI agents shop, negotiate, and transact on behalf of users, is projected to reach $3 trillion to $5 trillion globally by 2030.
B2B commerce is only one example and represents one of the many avenues where AI agents create value. The economic potential of AI agents extends to a myriad of use cases emerging across payments, wealth management and business operations, to name a few.
Digital Asset Infrastructure Is the Bridge Between AI and Finance
Digital asset infrastructure serves as the perfect foundation for agentic finance, providing the rails needed for AI agents to participate in the financial system.
Its key advantage is that many of the infrastructural rails required already exist, and major payment companies and e-commerce platforms are increasingly adopting these rails through partnerships and integrations.
The opportunity now is to leverage these financial rails, enabling AI agents to participate in the global economy at scale.
The compatibility between digital asset infrastructure and AI agents comes down to how machines make decisions and execute tasks. AI agents operate under preset conditions, which means they require money with a stable and predictable value.
Stablecoins provide that stable unit of account, enabling AI agents to calculate costs accurately and manage spending without facing price volatility. Stablecoins also move across blockchain networks that operate 24/7, allowing AI agents to pay for compute, data, APIs or other digital services whenever they are needed, rather than waiting for banking hours, payment cut-off times or cross-border settlement windows.
Digital asset infrastructure is also inherently programmable. Rather than relying on a person to enter card details or approve every transaction, digital wallets allow AI agents to authorise payments securely through cryptographic signatures.
Smart contracts can then automate financial actions based on predefined rules, such as automatically releasing payment when a service has been completed, a product has been delivered, or agreed conditions have been met.
At the same time, programmable wallets allow human owners to set spending limits, approve counterparties or transaction thresholds, ensuring AI agents can operate autonomously within clear guardrails.
AI Agents Create New Benefits
AI agents transacting independently create new economic value across every layer of the market.
For retail users, AI agents can take over administrative tasks that most people dislike. This includes paying bills and renewing subscriptions to comparing providers and switching to better-value alternatives automatically. This saves time and helps consumers make financial decisions with minimal manual oversight.
AI agents can help merchants automate financial workflows and enable more efficient transactions. This involves managing procurement and settling transactions, using stablecoins to ensure faster and cheaper payments.
At the institutional level, AI agents can improve how businesses manage capital. They can automate corporate treasury operations by managing company cash, reconciling invoices and executing cross-border payments around the clock.
Beyond routine financial tasks, AI agents can unlock new peer-to-peer economic models. Creators such as writers and developers can earn pay-per-use income when agents access their content, code or datasets, enabling new revenue streams without relying on intermediaries.
Finance Is Changing, and We Should Be Ready
Financial rails and the movement of money are going to change, and we are already seeing the foundations of that shift being built today. AI agents represent a new type of financial user, requiring infrastructure designed for autonomous transactions.
Rather than creating another financial system, the opportunity lies in bringing banks, institutions and technology platforms together to build on these existing rails and unlock agentic finance at scale. The focus now is on how this transition unfolds as users move from traditional systems toward agentic finance.
While these changes occur in the backend, the ultimate users remain understandably cautious about allowing AI agents to interact with their money. Building trust, improving education around these systems and showing people that they are safe to use will be vital to helping users become comfortable. Agentic finance is still in its early stages, and so are the regulatory frameworks governing it, making transparency and confidence critical to driving adoption.
