AI AGENTS ARE LEARNING TO SPEND MONEY. WHO WILL HANDLE THE PAYMENTS?

Summary from the TLDR Fintech newsletter

As AI agents move from recommending products to completing purchases, payment providers are developing infrastructure that lets software transact autonomously within user-defined limits. Mastercard is extending traditional payment rails to machines, while Coinbase's x402 protocol and XDC enable agents to pay for APIs, data, and computing power with USDC, including transactions worth fractions of a cent. Adoption remains early, but backing from Visa, Stripe, Google, AWS, and others suggests agent payments could become a major battleground between card networks and stablecoin-based systems.