MoonPay has launched Open Wallet Standard (OWS) - a new open-source wallet standard aimed at enabling AI agents to independently manage and move money across blockchain networks.

Today we're open-sourcing the Open Wallet Standard (OWS), a secure, local-first protocol that gives AI agents and developer tools a single way to store keys, manage wallets, and sign transactions across every major blockchain.

One vault, one interface, every chain.

The initiative is designed to solve a growing problem in the AI and crypto space: fragmentation, where each application requires its own wallet setup and key management system. By introducing a unified framework, MoonPay allows developers to equip AI systems with a single wallet that can operate across multiple environments.

The agentic payments stack has arrived. For the first time -- via x402, MPP, and A2A — AI agents can pay for things — APIs, compute, data — without a human in the loop.

But there's a gap in the stack that nobody's addressed. Every one of these protocols assumes your agent already has a wallet.

x402 needs a signed EIP-3009 authorization. MPP needs a signed payment from a funded account. They define how agents pay. None of them define where the private key lives, how it's stored, how it's protected, or how two different tools share access to the same wallet.

The wallet standard is built with a strong focus on security. Private keys are stored in encrypted vaults, and transaction signing happens outside the AI’s core runtime to reduce risk.

The idea is simple: one encrypted vault on your machine, one interface for every chain, and a security model where the private key is never exposed to the agent, the LLM, or any parent process.

Because the project is open-source and modular, developers can adapt it to different use cases, integrating storage, signing, and blockchain connectivity as needed.

The broader goal is to support the emergence of an “agent economy,” where AI systems are not just tools but active participants that can transact, pay for services, and interact financially without constant human input.

A couple of weeks ago, MoonPay also introduced a new feature that combines AI-driven crypto agents with hardware security from hardware wallets Ledger, aiming to address one of the biggest risks in automated crypto systems: exposure of private keys.

The system allows AI agents to execute tasks like trading, rebalancing portfolios, and moving assets across blockchains, but removes the need to hand over full control of wallet keys. Instead, every transaction generated by the AI must be manually verified and signed on a physical Ledger device, ensuring that private keys never leave secure hardware.

MoonPay adds Ledger-secured AI crypto agents to deal with wallet key risks

The new feature allows users to verify and sign every transaction generated by an AI agent using a Ledger hardware device, ensuring private keys never leave the hardware signer.

https://www.coindesk.com

Visa and Coinbase are both preparing for a future where AI agents - not humans - carry out most online transactions, but they are taking fundamentally different approaches to how that future internet will function. And when I refer to Visa and Coinbase, I don’t just mean the companies themselves; I’m using them as shorthand for a broader rivalry between incumbent payment networks and the crypto ecosystem.

The next major evolution of the internet will be driven by autonomous AI agents making payments continuously in the background, often without direct human involvement. This shift is expected to eliminate traditional checkout processes entirely, replacing them with machine-to-machine transactions happening at high speed and scale.

Visa is adapting its existing financial infrastructure to support this change. Its strategy is to extend traditional payment rails, like cards and stablecoin integrations, into a system where AI agents can transact within a regulated, familiar framework. In this vision, the future internet still resembles today’s financial system, but upgraded to handle automated, real-time payments between machines. Yet, incumbents like Visa cannot accommodate API calls that cost $0.002 when their minimum processing fee on a single transaction is around $0.30.

Coinbase, on the other hand, is building toward a more crypto-native model. It sees blockchain wallets as the natural financial tool for AI agents, mainly because these agents cannot meet traditional banking requirements like identity verification. Crypto wallets, which only require private keys, allow agents to transact freely without relying on banks or centralized intermediaries.

The result is a split between two competing visions of the “agent economy.” Visa is effectively trying to evolve the current system into one that supports AI-driven commerce, while Coinbase is pushing for a new, decentralized financial layer where agents operate independently using crypto.

Theirs is a broader competition over what the underlying infrastructure of the future internet will look like - an upgraded version of today’s system, or an entirely new one built around blockchain.

Why crypto bulls think AI agents will make stablecoins the default payment layer

The next trillion-dollar payments network won't have a checkout page. No card number, no CVV, no human at the keyboard. Just machines paying machines, thousands of times a second, for fractions of a cent.

https://www.coindesk.com

Since I mentioned micropayments and building on the topics I discussed in yesterday's edition of the newsletter, I wanted to share this op-ed by Meng Liu, Senior Analyst at Forrester. In it, Meng argues that Stripe and Paradigm's MPP may be a gamechanger for micropayments. Here's why.

For decades, micropayments struggled not due to technology but because people hesitate over small charges, abandon checkouts, and mentally weigh every transaction. MPP changes this by shifting payments from humans to AI agents, which can execute transactions automatically as part of completing a task, without friction or decision-making overhead.

The protocol is designed specifically for machine-to-machine payments, where paying becomes a seamless, programmatic step rather than a conscious action. This eliminates the “mental transaction cost” that made small payments impractical and unlocks use cases like paying per API call, data access, or digital service in real time.

Importantly, MPP is not a new payment network but a coordination layer that works across existing infrastructure - traditional rails, wallets, and crypto - making it easier to adopt without replacing current systems.

The broader implication is that AI agents could finally make micropayments viable at scale, turning them from a long-standing failed idea into a foundational part of an emerging machine-driven internet economy.

Do you agree with this take? Let me know in comments.

Why Stripe's Machine Payments Protocol Signals A Turning Point For Micropayments

On March 18, 2026, Stripe and Tempo launched the Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) alongside the Tempo Mainnet - a payments-focused blockchain codeveloped with Paradigm. But one design principle separates it from everything above: MPP is built for agents to pay, not humans.

https://www.forrester.com

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Disclaimer: None of this should or could be considered financial advice. You should not take my words for granted; rather, do your own research (DYOR) and share your thoughts to encourage a fruitful discussion.