Fireblocks Unveils Infrastructure For AI Agents

Digital assets platform Fireblocks has deepened its push into AI agent infrastructure by launching Agentic Payments Suite, a framework purpose-built to support the x402 protocol, as it also joined the x402 Foundation.

Fireblocks said Wednesday that its full-stack solution would cover “the full lifecycle” of AI agent payments, including wallet infrastructure for agents to send funds and an acceptance layer for merchants to receive them. Agentic Payments Suite also includes several compliance and settlement features for regulated financial institutions.

A key area of focus for Fireblocks with Agentic Payments Suite is to scale stablecoin adoption through the use of AI agents.

“Over a billion people use AI assistants daily,” Fireblocks co-founder and chief product officer Idan Ofrat told Cointelegraph. “If even a fraction starts delegating spending authority” to those agents, stablecoin velocity will “increase substantially.”

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire are among many crypto executives who predict AI agents will overtake humans as the main users of blockchain transactions in the coming years.

Meanwhile, several notable integrations advancing AI agent-driven stablecoin spending have emerged in recent weeks.

In early May, Amazon Web Services said it integrated Coinbase’s x402 payments protocol into Amazon Bedrock AgentCore to allow AI agents to transact in USDC (USDC) and access services through AWS-managed payment controls. 

A week earlier, crypto wallet startup Oobit launched a Visa-supported virtual card for AI agents to make online purchases in USDt (USDT) on behalf of businesses.

AI agent adoption still in early stages

However, data reveals that AI-agent transaction activity on the blockchain remains relatively small, with x402.org data showing that only $24.2 million worth of trading volume has been facilitated through the x402 protocol over the past 30 days.

Ofrat acknowledged that AI agent adoption is “still very early.”

“We’re in the infrastructure-building phase,” Ofrat said, adding that ”card infrastructure took decades to develop the controls and trust layers it has today…These things don’t happen overnight.”

Related: Exodus launches AI agent-focused stablecoin on Solana 

AI agents can transact in fiat too, with Google building infrastructure for AI agents to make online purchases in US dollars in September.

However, Ofrat takes the view that only stablecoins can handle AI agent payments at scale:

“Card networks and bank transfers can’t handle instant, programmable, machine-to-machine value transfer. Stablecoins on blockchain can. Digital assets aren’t just a good fit for agentic payments. They’re the only fit.”

Fireblocks has also joined the x402 Foundation, an industry group seeking to make Coinbase’s x402 protocol the universal payment rail for AI agents.

Existing members of the x402 Foundation include Big Tech firms such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services, along with payments companies Mastercard and Visa. It also includes crypto-native firms such as Circle, Polygon Labs and the Solana Foundation.

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