AI agents could become a key application of blockchain in consumer payments, according to Sandy Kaul, head of digital assets and innovation at Franklin Templeton.
She believes that traditional payment infrastructure is less suited for these scenarios due to fees, settlement delays, and the need for human involvement.
“Blockchain will play a crucial role in realizing the potential of agentic AI for consumer transactions,” Kaul wrote.
Why Franklin Templeton Points to Blockchain
In her column, Kaul explains that agentic AI differs from chatbots in its ability to not only respond to queries but also autonomously execute a sequence of actions. For instance, it can purchase data access, pay for computations, or call a paid API.
Franklin Templeton references a forecast by Bain & Company, which predicts that by 2030, AI agents could account for 15-25% of e-commerce sales in the U.S. According to McKinsey & Company, by the same time, agentic commerce will “orchestrate” $3-5 trillion in global consumer transactions.
Kaul asserts that such operations will require infrastructure with low fees, high throughput, and rapid settlement. She notes that blockchains can simultaneously record and settle transactions without a banking intermediary.
Networks Compared by the Company
Franklin Templeton compared the throughput of various networks in terms of transactions per second (TPS). According to the company, Bitcoin’s blockchain processes about 7 TPS, Ethereum around 75 TPS, Aptos up to 12,933 TPS, Solana up to 6,284 TPS, and BNB Chain up to 3,252 TPS.
For comparison, Kaul mentioned Visa, which typically handles 1,700-10,000 transactions per second. While its network records transactions quickly, final settlement takes 1-3 business days, she added.
Franklin Templeton believes that the growth of agentic payments could increase demand for native assets of the networks where these transactions will occur. Kaul cited SOL and ETH as examples.
Infrastructure is Already Emerging
Decrypt highlighted a payment protocol created by Coinbase for automated payments over HTTP. According to the documentation, x402 allows services to accept programmable payments from individuals and AI agents without accounts, sessions, or manual payments.
On July 14, the Linux Foundation announced the launch of the x402 Foundation. The organization includes 40 participants, such as AWS, Google, Mastercard, Visa, Coinbase, Stripe, Circle, Shopify, Solana Foundation, and Stellar Development Foundation.
In September 2025, Google introduced an open protocol for AI agent payments called the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2). The company developed it in collaboration with stakeholders from the payments and technology sectors, and for Web3 scenarios, it added an A2A x402 extension with the involvement of Coinbase, Ethereum Foundation, and MetaMask.
Recall that in April, developers of the Coinbase-supported x402 payment standard launched a marketplace for applications and services aimed at enhancing the utility of AI agents.