Google and PayPal Executives: Crypto Payments Will Become the Underlying Infrastructure of Future Commerce

Odaily News PayPal and Google Cloud executives stated that future commercial activities driven by AI Agents will operate on crypto payment rails, as AI Agents cannot use traditional bank accounts like humans.

Richard Widmann, Head of Web3 Strategy at Google Cloud, said AI Agents cannot open bank accounts for both technical and regulatory reasons, while cryptocurrencies offer an "excellent machine-readable payment interface." He revealed that Google has launched the open-source 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 Crypto at PayPal, stated that the company views AI Agents as the next generation of commercial entry points following offline, online, and mobile payments. She pointed out that PYUSD, as PayPal's stablecoin, provides a naturally programmable payment layer for AI-native payments and global transactions.

A PayPal survey indicates that while 95% of merchant websites now see traffic from AI Agents, only about 20% of merchants possess machine-readable product catalogs. Zabaneh believes merchants need to adapt to the AI Agent era quickly, otherwise they risk missing out on the next wave of commercial infrastructure upgrades.

Additionally, both parties discussed the security and responsibility issues of AI Agents. Widmann stated that multi-party custody will become a key solution for managing Agent funds. AI Agents should not have full control over private keys but should only hold partial key fragments to mitigate financial risk. (CoinDesk)