Visa report: AI agent payments are in a practical phase and stabilization currency is more suitable for HF small payments
On 16 July, Visa and Artemis jointly published a study, Agenic Payments from the Ground Up, which points out that AI proxy payments are moving from theory to real business scenes, divided into macro- and micro-business. Macro-business means that the agent performs, on behalf of humans, such as bookings, subscriptions, etc., similar to the traditional electrician; micro-business refers to small payments of HF between software, usually less than $1. The report analyses two machine-based payment agreements: x402 has processed approximately $150 million of adjusted transactions since its launch in May 2025, involving 109.6 million transactions, mainly in Base, Solana and Polygon; the MPP, constructed by Stripe and Tempo, has settled approximately $25,000 since it went online in mid-March 2026, involving approximately 115,000 transactions. The two agreements paid only a few cents on average, while the fixed transaction fee per transaction for traditional credit cards was much higher and could not support such a small payment scenario. In terms of settlement, traditional card payments apply to macro-business scenarios, and stable currency is more suitable for small payments in micro-business. The report suggests that future trends are two ways of integrating rather than one. The key challenge for AI agents to pay lies in the attribution of responsibility — it is not possible to determine who is responsible when the agent is wrong — and the existing legal framework does not yet cover such scenarios。
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