AI agents could become a key use case for blockchain in consumer payments, according to Sandy Kaul, Head of Digital Assets and Innovation at Franklin Templeton, in a recent article.
She argues that traditional payment infrastructure is less suitable for such scenarios due to fees, settlement delays, and the need for human involvement.
“Blockchain will play a key role in realizing the potential of agentic AI for consumer transactions,” Kaul wrote.
Why Franklin Templeton Points to Blockchain
The article explains that agentic AI differs from chatbots in its ability not only to respond to requests but also to independently perform a sequence of actions. For example, it can purchase data access, pay for computations, or call a paid API.
Franklin Templeton cites a forecast by Bain & Company, which predicts that by 2030, AI agents could account for 15–25% of e-commerce sales in the U.S. McKinsey & Company estimates that by the same year, agentic commerce will “orchestrate” $3–5 trillion in global consumer transactions.
Kaul asserts that such operations will require infrastructure with low fees, high throughput, and fast settlement. She notes that blockchains can simultaneously record and settle transactions without an intermediary bank.
Networks Highlighted by the Company
Franklin Templeton compared network throughput using TPS. According to the company, Bitcoin’s blockchain processes about 7 TPS, Ethereum approximately 75 TPS, Aptos up to 12,933 TPS, Solana up to 6,284 TPS, and BNB Chain up to 3,252 TPS.
For comparison, Kaul mentioned Visa, which typically processes 1,700–10,000 transactions per second. However, while its network records transactions quickly, final settlement takes 1–3 business days, she added.
Franklin Templeton believes that the growth of agentic payments could increase demand for native assets of the networks where such operations will be conducted. Kaul cited SOL and ETH as examples.
Infrastructure is Already Emerging
Decrypt highlighted a payment protocol developed by Coinbase for automated payments over HTTP. According to documentation, x402 allows services to accept programmable payments from humans and AI agents without accounts, sessions, or manual payments.
On July 14, the Linux Foundation announced the launch of the x402 Foundation. The organization includes 40 participants, such as AWS, Google, Mastercard, Visa, Coinbase, Stripe, Circle, Shopify, Solana Foundation, and Stellar Development Foundation.
In September 2025, Google introduced an open protocol for AI agent payments, the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2). The company developed it with participants from the payments and technology industries, adding an A2A x402 extension for Web3 scenarios with the involvement of Coinbase, Ethereum Foundation, and MetaMask.
Earlier, in April, developers of the Coinbase-supported x402 payment standard launched a marketplace for applications and services aimed at enhancing the utility of AI agents.
