Sandy Kaul, the head of digital assets and innovation at Franklin Templeton, stated that the AI proxy economy will increase the demand for blockchain protocols to support machine to machine small payments. Traditional bank card networks are not suitable for proxy payments due to fees and settlement times. Sandy Kaul pointed out that transactions on blockchain networks such as Aptos, Solana, and BNB Chain can be settled within seconds, faster than the settlement time of Visa's network, which takes 1 to 3 business days. Visa and Artemis stated in their report that traditional bank cards are insufficient to support AI agents, which require near zero fees and faster settlements. Since its launch in May 2025, the x402 payment protocol developed by Coinbase has achieved an adjusted transaction volume of $15 million and over 109 million adjusted transactions.
