Franklin Templeton: AI Agents Will Become the Main Driver of Cryptocurrency Payments
A new generation of artificial intelligence — agentic AI — could become the "killer app" for blockchain, ushering in an era of mass consumer payments. This is the conclusion reached by analysts at Franklin Templeton, one of the world's largest asset managers.
According to experts, traditional payment infrastructure is simply not ready for the era of autonomous agents. High fees, lengthy settlement periods, and the need for manual confirmation of each transaction make classic banking networks cumbersome and inefficient for the micro-payments that AI agents will generate. Unlike simple chatbots, agentic AI can independently execute chains of actions: purchasing access to data, paying for API computing power, or ordering goods, without requiring human involvement at every step.
The Scale of the Future Agent Economy
The forecasts on which Franklin Templeton relies are impressive. According to Bain & Company, by 2030, AI agents will account for 15% to 25% of all e-commerce sales in the United States. McKinsey goes even further, estimating the global volume of transactions "orchestrated" by agents at between $3 and $5 trillion. Servicing such a flow will require infrastructure with near-zero fees and instant settlements — precisely what blockchains can offer.
Which Networks Are Ready for the Load
In its analysis, Franklin Templeton provides comparative characteristics of network throughput. Bitcoin, with its 7 TPS, and Ethereum, with approximately 75 TPS, are clearly unsuitable for this task. However, high-performance blockchains such as Aptos (up to 12,933 TPS), Solana (up to 6,284 TPS), and BNB Chain (up to 3,252 TPS) look much more promising. For comparison: the Visa network processes up to 10,000 transactions per second at peak, but final settlement takes up to three business days. Blockchains, on the other hand, combine recording and settlement in a single action.
According to analysts, the growth of agent payments will directly increase demand for the native assets of the networks where these operations are conducted. SOL and ETH are cited as key examples.
Infrastructure Is Already Being Built
Notably, the infrastructure for the new economy is being created right now. The x402 protocol from Coinbase already exists, allowing programmable payments from agents to be accepted without the need for accounts and sessions. Moreover, on July 14, the Linux Foundation announced the launch of the x402 Foundation, which includes 40 giants such as AWS, Google, Mastercard, Visa, Coinbase, Stripe, Circle, and the Solana Foundation. Google, in turn, has introduced the open AP2 protocol, specifically adapted for Web3 scenarios with the participation of the Ethereum Foundation and MetaMask.
My view: The market is clearly moving from talking about blockchain's potential to creating concrete solutions for the AI economy. The involvement of mainstream giants like Google and Mastercard in this process indicates that cryptocurrency payments are ceasing to be a niche experiment and are becoming part of the global financial architecture of the future. Investors should closely monitor high-throughput networks that could become the "rails" for this new traffic.