Google and PayPal Executives: The AI Agent Business Era Will Rely on Cryptocurrency Payment Infrastructure

According to CoinDesk, executives from PayPal and Google Cloud stated that future AI Agent-driven business activities will operate on a cryptocurrency payment track, as AI Agents cannot use traditional bank accounts like humans.

Richard Widmann, Head of Google Cloud Web3 Strategy, mentioned that AI Agents cannot directly open bank accounts on both technical and regulatory levels, while cryptocurrencies provide an "excellent machine-readable payment interface." He revealed that Google has launched the open Agentic Payments Protocol (AP2) and donated it to the FIDO Foundation, with over 120 partners, including PayPal, already on board.

May Zabaneh, Senior Vice President of PayPal's crypto business, stated that the company views AI Agents as the next generation of business entry points following offline, online, and mobile payments. She pointed out that PYUSD, as PayPal's stablecoin, provides a natural programmable payment layer for AI-native payments and global transactions.

A PayPal survey showed that 95% of merchant websites currently have AI Agent traffic, but only about 20% of merchants have machine-readable product catalogs. Zabaneh believes that merchants need to adapt to the AI Agent era as soon as possible, or they will miss the next opportunity for upgrading their business infrastructure. Additionally, both parties discussed the security and accountability issues surrounding AI Agents.

Widmann stated that multi-party custody will become an important solution for managing Agent funds, and AI Agents should not fully control private keys but only hold partial key fragments to reduce financial risks.