Agent-to-Agent Finance: Blockchain Payments and Trust Infrastructure for Autonomous AI Agents

Hui Gong

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: Autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) agents are beginning to occupy a position between analytical tools and transacting counterparties. They can interpret goals, call external tools, negotiate with other agents, access data and computation, and in some settings initiate payments or blockchain transactions. This development creates a distinct problem for financial markets: if software agents can act economically under delegated authority, market participants need infrastructure for identity, authorisation, payment, verification, reputation and accountability. This chapter develops the concept of agent-to-agent finance as the layer of machine-mediated financial interaction in which autonomous agents discover counterparties, purchase services, express transaction intent, execute payments and generate auditable evidence. The argument is not that blockchain is a universal substrate for finance, but that programmable settlement, smart wallets, decentralised registries and verifiable computation can address specific coordination frictions created by autonomous agents. Drawing on recent work on blockchain agent-to-agent payments, ERC-8004 agent registries, provenance-based wallets, deterministic inference, decentralised finance (DeFi) intent mining, and official evidence on AI adoption in financial services, the chapter situates agent-to-agent finance as an emerging form of financial market infrastructure. It argues that the decisive design question is bounded autonomy: how to expand the set of economic actions that agents can safely perform without making markets more opaque, fragile or unaccountable.

Date: 2026-06, Revised 2026-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pay
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