The Era of AI Agents Making Payments is Coming: Tiger Research Highlights Competition in Wallet Industry

As we approach an era where AI agents autonomously trade and make payments, the cryptocurrency wallet industry is proactively accelerating the development of 'agent-specific wallets.' Tiger Research recently analyzed in a report that major players like Coinbase and Binance are expanding AI agent payment infrastructure even in the current situation where profitability is not clearly evident, as a strategy to seize the flow of funds and data dominance in the upcoming 'agent economy.'

According to the report, the current utilization of AI agents is focused more on trading bots within the cryptocurrency ecosystem than on everyday consumer spending. Earlier this year, a noteworthy experiment on the prediction market Polymarket involved paying an AI agent $50 and designing it to earn back the API and server costs on its own. The agent successfully performed autonomous trading, showcasing the potential for AI to evolve beyond a mere auxiliary tool into an independent economic actor.

However, the key lies not in trading itself but in the 'payment structure.' Tiger Research posits that if AI agents operate in a 'browserless' environment, directly exploring browsers to gather information and call APIs, the payment units could be broken down into microtransactions of $0.001 or even $0.00001. Unlike high-value payments occasionally made by humans, AI agents can execute dozens to thousands of micro-payments in the process of handling a single task.

This is where the limitations of existing card payment systems become apparent. Card payments are designed based on a cardholder-centric structure, chargebacks, and fixed fees per transaction, making it difficult to accommodate AI agent-based micro-payments. In contrast, cryptocurrency wallets can implement a 'programmable' structure that allows for conditional splitting, transferring, and settling of money flows, positioning them as a starting point for AI agent payments. Ultimately, there is speculation that payment networks for humans and payment infrastructures for machines could become separate.

The movements of market participants also support this. The report notes that not only exchanges but also stablecoin issuers are joining the competition for agent wallet infrastructure. While there may not yet be significant revenue generated, if AI agents begin to create large-scale transactions in the future, they could absorb that demand into their own infrastructure. This is more of a 'first-mover competition' to secure future customers and payment flows rather than a business aiming for immediate profits.

The actual revenue potential is substantial. Tiger Research estimated the revenue increase effects based on Coinbase's monthly active users (MTU) of 9.2 million, combining AI agent adoption rates, the number of agents per user, and daily call frequencies. In a conservative scenario, an additional revenue of approximately $84 million per year was anticipated, while in a neutral scenario, it expanded to $3.36 billion. In an aggressive scenario, it could reach $50.37 billion annually, forming a massive revenue source nearly seven times the current total revenue.

Importantly, this market is expected to grow not linearly but exponentially. As adoption rates increase, the number of agents per user rises, and call frequencies grow, the overall transaction volume and payment counts could expand exponentially. Once the AI agent payment market reaches a popularization trajectory, it could open up structural growth opportunities for wallet providers beyond simple fees.

The scalability of the wallet business does not stop at payment fees. The report suggests that transaction histories accumulated in agent wallets could function as credit evaluation data in the future. The frequency of transactions by specific AI agents, the actual revenue they generate, and their profitability and sustainability could accumulate as data, enabling financial services based on this information.

In this context, the report presents the case of Stripe Capital. Stripe executes loans based on merchant revenue data secured from its payment network rather than external credit evaluations, creating a representative case of financial expansion based on payment data. Similarly, AI agent wallet providers could evolve into 'agent neobanking' models offering revenue-based financing (RBF) or advance payments for operational funds in the future.

Of course, expectations currently outpace reality. AI agent payments face technical issues such as erroneous payments due to hallucinations, blocks from fraud detection systems (FDS), and low purchase conversion rates. Additionally, payment protocols like x402, AP2, and MPP are not standardized, and the identity verification (KYC) and regulatory frameworks for AI agents, which are not legal entities, are also lacking. For AI agents to generate their own revenue and utilize financial services based on that, technology, regulations, and accountability structures must be developed together.

Ultimately, the current competition is not a fight for immediate results. Just as it took years for the Apple App Store and WeChat Pay ecosystem to establish themselves, the AI agent wallet market is likely to be a long-term battle. Nevertheless, the reason the industry is moving now is clear: the moment AI agents and cryptocurrency wallets combine, it could determine who will hold the payment infrastructure and data sovereignty of the future digital economy. The main game of the 'agent economy' has yet to begin, but the market landscape is already quietly being laid out.

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