Interview with FinAI: Pioneering Order in the Age of the Agent Economy

Original | Odaily (@OdailyChina)

Author｜Azuma (@azuma_eth)

The narrative of AI development is rapidly shifting from "tool-based intelligence" to "autonomous intelligence." Two years ago, we marveled at the conversational fluency of LLMs like ChatGPT. Today, agents represented by "Lobster" OpenClaw can, to a certain extent, independently execute relatively complex real-world tasks.

The outline of the future world is becoming increasingly clear — AI's role in economic activities will gradually evolve from a "human assistant" to an "autonomous participant." In the near future, humans will become accustomed to the following scenarios: assistant-type Agents can help you with daily chores like booking flights and ordering food; research-type Agents can actively seek opportunities in financial markets; commercial Agents can automatically compare quotes from global suppliers and place orders... and their counterparts will also be other Agents.

But as AI Agents gradually gain economic agency, a new question arises — how should the economic order between AI Agents be established?

"AI can already perform tasks, but it lacks payment capabilities, an identity system, and a credit system. Without these infrastructures, AI's autonomous economy can hardly truly operate."

The above statement comes from FinAI, an AI startup recently contacted by Odaily. The company's core team primarily hails from leading internet companies and is currently actively embracing Web3 technology stacks like x402 and ERC-8004, attempting to address the aforementioned "order" problem based on three dimensions: payment, identity, and reputation.

FinAI founder Rechard revealed that FinAI is currently in the seed funding stage and has already received investment commitments from some leading blockchain players in the industry.

Pioneer of Order in the Agent Economy Era

To put it in one sentence, what FinAI aims to do is — build a set of financial infrastructure for AI Agents, providing the underlying order for the future Agent-to-Agent economy.

In FinAI's vision, the AI Agent economy requires three core foundational capabilities: payment capability, an identity system, and a credit system.

• First is payment capability. Currently, the vast majority of AI Agents do not possess independent payment capabilities; they can only execute tasks but cannot complete real transactions. For example, an AI agent can help a user search for flight tickets, but the final payment still requires human intervention. FinAI hopes to achieve microsecond-level payment settlement between Agents based on the x402 protocol, enabling service calls between Agents to form a complete economic loop.
• Second is the identity system. While introducing the ERC-8004 protocol, FinAI proposed the KYA (Know Your Agent) concept, analogous to KYC, to establish a verifiable identity system for AI Agents. Unlike KYC in traditional finance, KYA focuses on Agent identity verification and behavioral boundaries, allowing AI Agents to possess compliant and secure identity attributes when executing tasks.
• Third is the credit system. FinAI believes that large-scale transactions between Agents in the future will inevitably rely on a reputation system. An Agent's historical transactions, task execution quality, refund records, and other information can all become important bases for credit assessment. This credit system will form the trust foundation for future AI economic activities.

Rechard added that FinAI hopes to package and integrate the above three foundational capabilities and open them up in the form of APIs/Skills for Agents to freely call. This would allow every Agent to easily obtain payment, identity, and credit capabilities, promoting the gradual formation of an Agent transaction market.

Regarding target customers and revenue models, Rechard revealed that FinAI primarily targets two groups. One is Agent application developers in the Web2 world; such B2B users need to access FinAI's services through API subscriptions, which will also be FinAI's main source of revenue. The other group is on-chain users in the Web3 ecosystem; FinAI is exploring the design of various financial application scenarios with mainstream public chains, providing services to Web3 users through Agent Skill integration. FinAI may consider charging a certain percentage of transaction fees on task transactions between Agents in the future, but Rechard revealed that FinAI aims to incubate a mature Agent transaction market and is happy to see Agents earn money independently. It does not plan to profit from the C-end, so the transaction commission rate is expected to be very low and friendly.

In 2026, FinAI completed its first autonomous payment order and expects to achieve formal service revenue within the first quarter. Rechard commented on this: "What FinAI is doing isn't exactly a cash-burning business, so we expect to achieve positive profitability within the year."

Embracing Web3 is the General Trend

FinAI has actively embraced protocols and standards born in the Web3 world, such as x402 and ERC-8004, in its technology stack, and has already planned to integrate the latest ERC-8138 protocol launched by the Ethereum Foundation as a supplement into its services. In Rechard's view, this is not merely a technical choice but a result driven by practical needs.

Readers familiar with "Lobster" may have noticed some recent security controversies arising from it, such as accidental data deletion or email sending. Assuming AI Agents could immediately access your financial accounts now, the risks would only be harder to control — which is why many companies are currently unwilling to directly open credit cards or bank accounts to Agents.

Rechard stated on this matter, "Agents need a new payment and identity system, not to directly inherit human financial accounts." And the on-chain stablecoin payment and settlement system is currently the optimal option in the market.

Cost and efficiency advantages are the core elements. In the traditional cross-border payment system, fund settlement typically takes T+3 to T+5 days, with high costs and complex processes, making this path completely incompatible with the Agent economy, which has huge micropayment demands. In contrast, the payment and settlement system based on stablecoins can complete transactions within seconds and significantly reduce costs. FinAI revealed that its system can currently achieve real-time payments in the range of $0.01 to $1000, with settlement completed within 2 to 3 seconds, and on-chain settlement costs are about 1/300 of traditional systems.

Rechard pointed out that the proportion of stablecoins in global payments is continuously rising. Once funds move from the traditional banking system into the stablecoin system, they often do not flow back. This trend is forcing traditional institutions to actively embrace on-chain finance.

However, Rechard also mentioned that when clients from traditional markets come into contact with on-chain financial systems, they still have concerns about compliance and security, but this is precisely FinAI's current advantage. On one hand, FinAI possesses full-stack technical and engineering capabilities and related patents, from identity gateways and payment systems to quantum encryption wallets, enabling it to build a digital banking-level secure environment for economic activities between Agents. On the other hand, leveraging the identity and credit system based on KYA, FinAI can further ensure the compliance and security of Agent economic activities in the design of the transaction architecture.

First-Mover Advantage Means Everything

FinAI was first conceived in August 2025. Although the development time has not been long, the progress has been remarkably efficient. In November 2025, FinAI was preliminarily launched; on January 13, 2026, it completed integration with the Base chain; on February 5, it completed the Agent's MCP; on March 6, it completed the PoC for DID and the reputation system...

Rechard mentioned that today, while Agent economic activities are still in their early stages, the greatest competitive advantage lies in who can first establish a complete, functioning system. There are indeed some point solutions in the current market, such as projects focusing on payment, identity, or reputation scoring, but there are still relatively few infrastructures that truly integrate all three.

Once the Agent economy begins to accelerate and explode in the future, when AI Agents need payment capabilities, identity authentication, or a credit system, if FinAI is the earliest platform to complete the full closed loop, then Agents will prioritize calling its services.

Rechard also shared a secret regarding this — to provide services that are more friendly to Agents. Specifically, the entities selecting services in the future will be Agents, and Agents' behavioral logic is different from humans; they will automatically seek the most cost-effective and easiest-to-integrate services. Therefore, FinAI particularly emphasizes "Agent-friendly" in its system design. Its code interfaces and API structures are optimized for Agents, making it easier for Agents to integrate and call.

Looking at historical experience, every evolution of market paradigms requires new infrastructure and order. The e-commerce era gave rise to third-party payments, the mobile internet era gave rise to digital wallets, and the rise of AI Agents may give rise to a new economic system. FinAI's goal is to act as a pioneer, attempting to lead the construction of order under this new system.