Ben Weiss
Google on Tuesday released a new payments scheme to make it easier for different AI apps to send and receive money. The open-source protocol not only includes support for more traditional forms of payments like credit and debit cards but also stablecoins, or cryptocurrencies pegged to underlying assets like the U.S. dollar.
To add compatibility with stablecoins, Google worked with the crypto exchange Coinbase, which has built its own AI and crypto payments scheme. It also collaborated with other crypto companies, including the Ethereum Foundation. For other elements of the new payment protocol, Google conferred with more than 60 other organizations including Salesforce, American Express, and Etsy.
“The way we built it is from the ground up to factor in both heritage and existing payment rail capabilities as well as forthcoming capabilities such as stablecoins,” James Tromans, the head of Web3 at Google Cloud, told Fortune.
In the buzzword-laden world of AI, “agents’ are AI algorithms designed for specific use cases that can call up apps on one’s device or across the internet. Some companies have created agents that specialize in writing code. Others have created AI agents that browse online marketplaces to buy, say, clothes for a human shopper.
Many tech executives predict that, in the near future, AI will increasingly talk with AI, with no humans in between. If this comes to pass, AI financial advisors could talk with AI representatives at different financial institutions to find mortgages for housebuyers, or AI personal shoppers could chat with AI shopkeepers to find the perfect pair of jeans for sharp dressers.
That’s why Google released in April a new protocol that creates a standard means for different agents to communicate with each other. Tuesday’s launch of a protocol for agent-to-agent payments builds on that framework and ensures that transactions between two AI agents are safe, secure, and what the humans on either end intended, said Tromans, the Google executive.
Coinbase and Google worked together to make sure their payments schemes were interoperable, Erik Reppel, head of engineering at Coinbase’s developer platform, told Fortune. “We’re all working to figure out how we can make AI transmit value to each other,” said Reppel.
Google is one of the more public Big Tech companies that have shown interest in stablecoins, one of the buzziest sectors in crypto and Silicon Valley. Amid a more crypto-friendly presidential administration in the U.S., other tech firms like Apple, Airbnb, and Meta have all explored stablecoin integrations. And in June, Shopify announced that it would roll out stablecoin payments to its users later in the year.
