Agentic Commerce Can’t Rely on Credit Cards – Crypto Is the Only Way Forward

The coming wave of AI-driven commerce could end before it even begins. AI agents are on the verge of reshaping digital commerce, but the rails we use today – especially credit cards – are a poor match. They are expensive, slow to settle, prone to fraud, and built around human use.

We believe the best alternative is crypto-native rails. For examples, Open protocols like x402 give agents the ability to transact securely, instantly, and at scale. This is not an optional upgrade – it is the foundation for a machine-first economy.

The Next Era of Commerce

There’s currently a shift towards software taking action for us. This is agentic commerce: AI agents that handle the full process of finding, negotiating, and paying, with little human involvement.

It is already happening. AI travel agents can book flights and reserve hotels. Browser extensions can handle crypto checkout on Amazon. Assistants can take a prompt like “find a $50 gift for mom” and manage the research, the purchase, and the delivery.

At ETHGlobal New York last week, projects like Etherius (AI-powered NFT payments), Kyma Pay (crosschain stablecoin transactions), and x402-flash (escrow for high-frequency API calls) all showed what is possible. Each used x402, reviving the long-dormant HTTP 402 “Payment Required” code as a way to settle small payments natively on the web.

The stakes are significant as the global AI market is projected to grow from $189 billion in 2023 to $4.8 trillion by 2033 (UNCTAD). Thus, Payment rails will determine whether that growth is unlocked or held back.

Also Read: NEAR Research Head on Crypto Governance

Why Credit Cards Don’t Work

Credit cards and bank transfers were designed for people. They break when applied to machines:

• Settlement lags. What feels instant to a person can take two or three business days to actually clear. That delay makes real-time task chaining impossible.
• Costs do not scale. With 2–3% fees and $0.10–$0.30 fixed charges, a $0.03 API call ends up as a 900% loss.
• Human-centric design. Networks tied to national systems and GUIs requiring manual input create friction that agents cannot work around.

The deeper mismatch is trust. Cards validate people using billing addresses or CVV codes. AI agents rely on cryptographic proofs. Trying to push one model into the other only introduces new risks.

Tokenization Won’t Save It

Credit card tokenization, the process of replacing card numbers with secure tokens, makes breaches less likely but doesn’t solve the underlying issues.

PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliance still costs tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, a year and yet fraud still happens at machine speed, with bots testing thousands of stolen credentials in minutes. More advanced systems can mimic human behavior, from mouse paths to typing cadence, to slip past defenses. And chargebacks are a structural drag: every dispute can cost $20+, an impossible burden if transactions scale into the millions.

This system was never designed for agents. Tokenization patches symptoms but keeps builders locked into reversible rails that do not fit a machine-first world.

Also Read: Why Crypto’s Future Depends on Smarter Sports Sponsorships

Why Crypto Rails Fit

Onchain-native payments on x402 match how agents actually work. Fees on Base fall well below a penny. Transactions settle with finality, so there is no chargeback layer. Single-use signatures and payment channels cut fraud at its root. Developers can integrate with a single line of code.

Combine that with stablecoins on Layer 2, and new patterns emerge:

• Services can price in fractions of a cent, finally making microtransactions viable.
• Agents can transact directly with each other, no accounts or GUIs required.
• Everyday services – travel, bills, premium content – can be automated end-to-end.

Builders Are Already Proving It

Gloria AI already runs hundreds of trading agents that use x402 with Virtuals Protocol’s ACP stack to pay for real-time news signals as they operate. ETHGlobal teams are experimenting with the same tools. These early systems show that a machine-first economy is already starting to take shape.

While regulatory clarity is still evolving and mainstream adoption is uneven, the developer advantages of crypto-native rails are tangible today. x402 brings real-time settlement, finality, and costs measured in fractions of a cent – benefits that card networks, even tokenized, simply cannot offer. For agentic commerce, these practical gains outweigh the uncertainty, making crypto-native rails the clear choice for builders.

Also Read: Gemini Europe Head on Where Tokenized Equities Go Next

The Path Forward

Legacy rails are too slow, too costly, and too dependent on human workflows. Tokenization does not fix that.

The way forward is crypto-native. With protocols like x402, developers finally have payment rails that fit machines: scalable, secure, and built for real-time.

Authors: 

Coinbase VP Dan Kim – Dan is a regular contributor at BrandTalk, Coingape. He is Vice President for Business Development & Head of Digital Asset Listings at Coinbase. He leads as Head of Strategy at Coinbase Developer Platform, leading strategic partnerships with developers, creators, and users of the global web3 ecosystem. Prior to Coinbase, Dan worked at Tesla as Global Head of Sales & Delivery and at Airbnb as Head of Supply for Airbnb Plus.

Coinbse Developer Platform Head Nemil Dalal – Nemil is a regular contributor at BrandTalk, Coingape. He serves as the Head of the Coinbase Developer Platform and has been in crypto since 2016. After working at Google, he founded CryptoFin, an early DeFi protocol. As the co-author of key early Ethereum docs, he’s shaped decentralization + audited leading projects like dYdX and Rarebits.

Coinbase Enginnering Head Erick Reppel – Erik is a regular contributor at BrandTalk, Coingape. He leads Engineering at Coinbase Developer Platform. He began his career at Coinbase on the Machine Learning Platform before taking on engineering leadership roles at Clubhouse and Zora. At Zora, he oversaw engineering across protocol, backend, frontend, mobile, and security. After three years, Erik returned to Coinbase to lead the development of next-generation developer tools and x402, the AI payments protocol.