Alchemy, a leading provider of cryptocurrency infrastructure, has launched AgentPay, a innovative tool designed to facilitate collaboration between various AI payment systems from prominent companies such as Coinbase, Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, and Circle. This development addresses the current limitation of agentic payment systems, which are emerging but unable to interact with each other. As a result, merchants seeking to cater to AI agents as customers are forced to establish separate integrations for each protocol. According to Alchemy CTO Guillaume Poncin, "This approach is unsustainable and will only become more fragmented as additional systems are launched." AgentPay resolves this issue by allowing merchants to register their existing API, which is then provided with a new endpoint, enabling any agent on a supported protocol to make payments through it.
Alchemy is often regarded as the 'AWS of Web3' due to its provision of essential infrastructure, developer tools, and node services for building blockchain applications. AgentPay promises to simplify the process by requiring only one integration for every protocol, supporting protocols like x402, MPP, A2P, and L402. By acting as a translation layer, AgentPay routes instructions without Alchemy handling the funds, as explained by Poncin. The emergence of agentic finance, expected to play a significant role in internet payments, involves micro-transactions and nano-payments between AI agents, often with human involvement in the background.
Alchemy has initiated a private beta launch, with plans for a general release in the coming weeks.