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Payouts.com sees agent payments shifting beyond wallets

The creators of Payouts.com believe that managing payments for agents will increasingly rely on flexible, automated systems, rather than just using digital wallets like stablecoins.

Summary

  • Payouts.com CEO Leor Ceder says programmability, not wallets, will define which AI agents enterprises can trust by 2027.
  • Co-founder Barak Hirchson lists five non-negotiable controls before companies let agents transact autonomously.
  • Stablecoins win in cross-border and machine-to-API micropayments but lose to PIX, UPI, ACH and SEPA elsewhere.

Leor Ceder and Barak Hirchson, the founders of Payouts.com, believe that simply using stablecoin wallets won’t be enough for the future of shopping with AI. They contend that the real long-term value will come from the technology that *controls* those wallets – the programmable layer beneath them.

Payouts.com is positioned as an alternative to the current trend of using digital wallets for payments to agents. Research from Juniper predicts a huge increase in stablecoin payments between businesses – rising from $13.4 billion in 2026 to $5 trillion by 2035. Business-to-business transactions are expected to account for 85% of the total value of these stablecoin payments.

Where stablecoins win and where they lose

According to Payouts.com’s head of solutions, Paul Hirchson, the best way to send payments depends on where the recipient is, how they want to be paid, how quickly the money needs to arrive, the amount being sent, and the overall cost. Stablecoins are the clear best option in two specific situations.

Sending money internationally, compared to using the SWIFT system, can cost 4 to 5% of the total amount due to wire fees and currency exchange rates. Additionally, new technology allows for very small, automated payments between machines using APIs, with a standard already in place to send invoices in stablecoins. According to Crypto.news, AI-powered programs have already processed $73 million in 176 million transactions using cryptocurrency networks, with USDC being the dominant currency at 98.6%.

According to Hirchson, Brazil’s PIX system clears payments in less than ten seconds with no fees, while India’s UPI processes hundreds of millions of transactions daily at almost no cost. He argues that successful payment platforms need to be able to choose the most efficient payment method for each transaction, rather than being limited by the payment options their system currently supports.

The five non-negotiable agent controls

Hirchson identified five essential security measures companies must implement before allowing AI agents to make transactions on their own. These include limiting agent access, setting strict spending limits directly within the system, requiring digitally signed approvals for each transaction, ensuring payments can’t be duplicated, and defaulting to a secure, ‘fail-safe’ mode.

He explained that programmable spending essentially means setting a budget limit upfront, then having systems automatically enforce it, allowing flexibility within those boundaries. However, he noted that the industry isn’t consistently developing these kinds of systems quickly enough.

He explained that some recently shipped wallets have security limits and enforced rules. Others are sent with an API key and a pre-funded balance, which he warned is the most dangerous setup if the key is stolen.

What changes by 2027

According to Ceder, by May 2027, the key question won’t be *which* stablecoin becomes dominant. Instead, it will be about programmability – specifically, how precisely businesses can control what automated systems (agents) are permitted to do, how consistently those rules are followed, and how easily they can demonstrate compliance with regulations later on.

According to Ceder, the current competition among digital wallets will eventually be seen as a crucial period of development, similar to the early browser wars, but the real long-term value won’t be found in the wallets themselves. Instead, security and legal compliance need to be built directly into the payment system. Every transaction should go through multiple checks to verify the sender, receiver, and relevant legal rules before any funds are transferred.

Coinbase and Cloudflare have developed the x402 protocol, which is quickly becoming a popular system for handling payments between different parties. It recently became part of the Linux Foundation. Amazon Web Services (AWS) added x402 to its Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Payments service earlier this month, and Solana and Google have also launched Pay.sh as another option for similar payments.

Payouts.com believes that businesses will primarily manage their spending through the systems built *on top of* existing payment networks. The core technology remains independent, but the surrounding infrastructure provides the necessary control and features.

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2026-05-29 20:50