Experience the Dawn of Agentic Commerce at Consensus 2026

A significant shift is underway in the world of commerce, driven by the convergence of artificial intelligence and blockchain payments. AI agents, capable of autonomous perception, decision-making, and action, are beginning to engage in transactions, including paying for APIs, settling invoices, and interacting with infrastructure in ways that traditional payment systems were not designed to handle. The existing payment infrastructure, including credit cards, bank logins, and merchant onboarding flows, poses friction that these agents cannot navigate as humans do. Consensus 2026 is poised to address the future of this landscape, including the development of rails, regulatory frameworks, and business models that will support agentic commerce. The event will bring together over 15,000 influential figures from the crypto, AI, and finance sectors to discuss and shape the future of agentic payments. According to Christian Catalini, MIT professor and founder of the Cryptoeconomics Lab, true agentic payments will commence when AI becomes the counterparty, enabling capabilities such as atomic settlement against delivery, per-second payment streaming, and transactions with counterparties lacking a KYC footprint. This is not a distant future scenario but a near-term engineering challenge that will be tackled by engineers, investors, and policymakers at Consensus. The internet, initially built for humans, now needs to adapt to the requirements of AI agents. Google Cloud's active investment in blockchain payment rails and presence at Consensus 2026 underscores the seriousness with which agentic commerce is being approached at the highest levels of the tech industry. Rich Widmann, Google Cloud's Global Head of Strategy for Web3, notes that the convergence of agentic AI, blockchain payments, and commerce is in its early stages but gaining momentum. However, he also points out that the biggest friction points arise from products still being designed for humans, not agents, leading to barriers such as sign-ups, logins, and manual onboarding. The race for the agentic stack is heating up, with protocols like x402 and MPP emerging as contenders for payment infrastructure designed for AI agents. x402, an open payment protocol built on HTTP and backed by Coinbase, aims to enable agents to pay for digital services with stablecoins in a seamless flow. MPP, developed by Tempo and supported by Stripe, offers an alternative vision for autonomous agent payments. Consensus 2026 will host key figures from both protocols, as well as other leaders in the field, such as Stefano Bury of Virtuals Protocol and Chi Zhang of Kite. For those looking to delve deeper into the practical aspects of building and deploying agentic payments, CoinDesk University will provide a comprehensive, three-day curriculum covering the fundamentals, implementation, and advanced topics. The program is designed to be immersive, with hands-on workshops, mainstage sessions, and networking opportunities. Given the rapid evolution of agentic commerce, the window for influencing its development is limited. The protocols and regulatory frameworks discussed at Consensus 2026 could become the foundation for trillions of dollars in machine-to-machine transactions, making it a pivotal moment for those involved.