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\nAn era has begun in which “agent payment,” in which artificial intelligence (AI) agents trade goods and services instead based on human card information, goes beyond the experimental stage and works in earnest on the actual financial payment network.<\/p>\n
According to an analysis of agent payments announced by Visa and Mastercard, which controls more than 90% of the international payment network market on the 27th, more than 30 countries have completed AI agent payments or are conducting pilot tests around the world.\n<\/p>\n
In addition to Korea, the United States, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, India, Mexico, and Brazil have actually completed payments using the existing card payment network. Several countries, including Europe, the United Kingdom, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and Africa, are conducting tests in a controlled environment through Visa’s ‘Ageptic Ready’ program. In Korea, an AI agent handled the call and payment of a car from Incheon International Airport to Gwanghwamun through “Live Agentic Payment” for the first time in Korea in March.\n<\/p>\n
Competition among financial, fintech, and virtual asset companies around the world to preempt AI agent payment standards seems to be getting fiercer this year. Outside the traditional card payment network, the open AI agent payment standard “x402” protocol developed by Coinbase, the largest virtual asset exchange in the U.S., is rapidly growing. According to x402 related statistical platform x402 Scan, x402 cumulative payments have reached 197 million, payments of $52.48 million, buyers (AI agents) 845,800, and sellers 250,000.\n<\/p>\n
The reason why global payment and fintech dinosaurs are preoccupying AI payment networks is because of the huge market size. According to Mastercard, the company is expected to grow from $910 million (about 1.25 trillion won) this year to $1.4154 trillion (about 1950 trillion won) in 2031.\n<\/p>\n
Accordingly, competition to occupy the AI agent payment standard is also spreading in big tech, financial sector, and virtual asset industry. In fact, according to Tiger Research, a research firm specializing in Web3, eight new agent payment standard protocols have been announced over the past year.\n<\/p>\n
The agent payment market is largely divided into two branches. One is ‘Analytic Commerce’, in which a person entrusts shopping to an AI agent and the agent selects and pays for products on behalf of the user. The other is “Machine-to-machine payment (M2M)” where agents and agents buy and sell application interface (API) calls, data, and computational power without human intervention.\n<\/p>\n
The competition in the agent payment market is developing into a three-way battle between Big Tech, which is trying to establish its own payment network such as Google, credit card companies that are trying to collect transaction traffic through their own networks such as Visa and Mastercard, and the virtual asset industry with open standards such as Coinbase. Google is pushing for the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), a communication standard between merchants and AI agents, and the Agent Payment Protocol (AP2) that leaves payment rights in the form of digital contracts that cannot be forged or altered.\n<\/p>\n
Through Visa Intelligent Commerce, which was released in April last year, Visa operates ‘Intelligent Commerce Connect’ that implements a safe trading experience in a network agnostic environment where services, including its own technology, are not dependent on specific network architectures, protocols, and physical infrastructure underlying them, and operate the same anywhere.\n<\/p>\n
Mastercard also joined hands with Cloudflare to automatically filter out reliable agent traffic without merchants touching the code. More than 30 companies, including Adiyen and Coinbase, will participate in AP4M, which was launched by Mastercard last month to support settlement of multiple payment networks that include cards, accounts, and stablecoins.\n<\/p>\n
Coinbase, which targets the ultra-small and ultra-high frequency M2M payment market, which is difficult to afford with the existing card fee system, already unveiled the open standard x402 protocol in May last year.\n<\/p>\n
The Korean financial sector, which has been waiting to see foreign companies compete for the right to take the lead in payments, is also moving urgently. On the 1st (local time), “Open Standard,” a coalition of 140 global payment, finance, and big tech companies, announced that it would release the dollar-linked stablecoin “OUSD” within this year. Seven major credit card companies, including KB Kookmin, Hyundai, BC, Hana, Samsung, Woori, and NH Nonghyup Card, which had not come up with a separate agent roadmap, have joined the OUSD consortium as initial partners.\n<\/p>\n
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