Key Takeaways
What happened with Google’s Agentic Payments Protocol (AP2)?
Google released an open-source AI agent payment system that leverages crypto and fiat.
Why does this matter for crypto adoption?
AI bots will become crucial assistants in the future, and will need a trusted, standard way to be adopted into e-commerce.
Google unveiled an open-source agentic payments system in anticipation of future e-commerce driven by intelligent bots on behalf of users and themselves.
According to a Fortune report, the tech giant collaborated with top crypto firms and protocols like Coinbase, Ethereum[ETH] Foundation, Sui [SUI], and others.
This showcased another product market fit for crypto and stablecoins in the agentic and post-AGI (artificial general intelligence) era.
Reacting to the update, James Tromans, the Head of Web3 at Google Cloud, said,
“The way we built it is from the ground up to factor in both heritage and existing payment rail capabilities as well as forthcoming capabilities such as stablecoins.”
Crypto and AI merge
Beyond crypto activities, Google has also worked with Salesforce, American Express, and others on a wide range of commercial activities that agents can handle.
For the unfamiliar, AI agents are specialized autonomous or semi-autonomous bots that can handle virtually everything humans do online, from shopping to booking flights.
Experts believe that they will become crucial assistants in the future. And most importantly, there will be agent-to-agent interactions without human intervention.
However, crypto or stablecoins will be the only way to pay and monetize their services. That’s where the new Agent-to-Agent (A2A) protocol comes in.
The crypto-focused agents were first fronted by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong last year; agentic transactions have now become a reality.
In its first demo, built with Coinbase for Lowe’s Innovation Lab, agents carried out end-to-end shopping tasks — from research to checkout — using stablecoin payments.
Commenting on the latest update, Armstrong called it “really cool.”
Source: X
Ethereum Foundation deepens AI/crypto push
But this could be just the beginning.
The Ethereum Foundation recently formed a dedicated AI team to integrate agents into the blockchain, allowing them to operate and thrive without hindrance from legacy systems.
Commenting on their work in the A2A protocol, David Crapis, AI lead at EF, said,
“It’s a big deal: adding native crypto payments to the A2A protocol, a nice complement to ERC-8004, which brings discovery & trust.”
Other legacy payment players like Visa also believe that agentic e-commerce will become a big thing.
In June, Visa partnered with Crossmint to form “Visa Intelligent Commerce” to allow agents to make seamless purchases on behalf of consumers.
But Google is going for the whole next-generation payment stack.
Last month, it announced a low-cost L1 blockchain network focused on payment and financial markets, directly competing with Ethereum, Solana [SOL], and others.
It remains to be seen how far it will continue influencing the Web3 space.