Confidential — Updated February 2026

Programmable Controllership for the Agent Economy

Commerce is becoming agent-mediated. What doesn't exist yet is the economic governance layer — budget controls, escrowed settlement, verification gates, and audit infrastructure for autonomous systems.

$15T
B2B agent purchases by 2028 — Gartner
80%
Fortune 500 deploying active agents — Microsoft
48.6%
Multi-agent system CAGR — Market.us
1,445%
Surge in multi-agent inquiries — Gartner
The Shift

Commerce Is Becoming Agent-Mediated

Software agents are beginning to execute real economic activity — purchasing APIs, hiring services, managing budgets, and coordinating workflows. The next phase of the internet is not just agent execution. It is agent-to-agent economic coordination.

Standards Are Forming
Protocols like x402, AP2, and emerging agent commerce standards demonstrate that machine-native payments are no longer theoretical. The rails are forming. Coinbase x402 has processed 50M+ transactions. Google AP2 launched with 60+ partners including Mastercard and PayPal.
The Gap Remains
What does not yet exist is the economic operating layer that governs how agents: receive budgets, execute within policy constraints, settle funds programmatically, verify output before release, accumulate reputation, and produce auditable transaction history.
The Missing Governance Primitives
Transaction capability exists. Economic governance does not.
Budget-Bounded Mandates
Agents receive defined spending authority. Not open-ended access.
Escrow-Based Settlement
Funds locked until milestones verified. Conditional release logic.
Verifiable Output Release
Checkpoints validate work before funds move.
Spend Policy Enforcement
Deterministic rules. Cannot be prompt-injected.
Attribution & Receipts
Full audit trail across autonomous pipelines.
Reputation Accrual
Performance-weighted trust scores across agents.
Without these primitives, agents can move money — but they cannot operate inside real financial controls. AgentPAY provides this missing layer.
The Missing Layer

Programmable Controllership

Existing infrastructure enables transactions. It does not enable governed delegation. Enterprises and multi-agent systems require a fundamentally different set of primitives.

What Enterprises Actually Need
Current rails solve execution. They do not solve governance.
RequirementCurrent StateWhat's Missing
Budget delegation Agents have unlimited or no spending authority Bounded mandates with policy constraints
Settlement verification Fire-and-forget payments Milestone-gated escrow with verification
Spend controls No per-agent limits or approval gates Programmable policy enforcement
Audit trails Transaction logs without attribution Full pipeline attribution and receipts
Dispute resolution No mechanism exists Programmatic dispute and resolution flows
Trust between agents No reputation infrastructure Performance-weighted reputation scores
AgentPAY converts raw payment capability into programmable economic systems. We are not a base payment rail. Not a checkout protocol. Not a wallet extension. We are the economic coordination layer that sits above execution rails.
Stack Position

Where AgentPAY Sits

Above execution rails. Below agent orchestrators. The governance and settlement logic that makes autonomous economic activity auditable and controllable.

The Agent Economic Stack
Each layer has incumbents. The governance layer does not.
LayerRoleExamples
Agent Orchestrators Task decomposition, routing, execution LangChain, CrewAI, AutoGen
Checkout Standards Merchant commerce flows ACP (OpenAI + Stripe)
AgentPAY Budget governance, escrow, settlement logic, reputation, audit Us THIS LAYER
Authorization Protocols Intent and mandate signaling AP2 (Google, 60+ partners)
Execution Rails Transaction execution x402 (Coinbase), on-chain settlement
Core Wedge

Budgeted Delegation + Escrowed Settlement

The first defensible beachhead: programmable spend for multi-agent pipelines. An orchestrator can issue mandates, bind funds, enforce policy, verify output, and release conditionally.

The Mandate Lifecycle
How an orchestrator delegates economic authority to specialist agents.
1
Issue Mandate
Defined budget + policy
2
Bind Escrow
Funds locked
3
Agent Executes
Within policy bounds
4
Verify Output
Evaluation checkpoint
5
Release Funds
Conditional settlement
6
Record + Reputation
Receipts + trust accrual
This transforms agent swarms into auditable economic actors. That is the wedge. Not wallets. Not payments. Programmable economic governance.
Timing

Why This Matters Now

Enterprise Agent Deployment Is Accelerating
80% of Fortune 500 deploying active agents (Microsoft). Gartner projects 40% of enterprise apps will include conversational AI agents by end-2026. Multi-agent inquiry surge: 1,445% in 18 months.
Machine-Native Payment Standards Are Being Formalized
x402 (Coinbase): 50M+ transactions. AP2 (Google): 60+ partners including Mastercard, Amex, PayPal. ACP (OpenAI + Stripe): 1M+ merchants. The execution rails exist.
AI Workflows Increasingly Span Multiple Autonomous Actors
Google DeepMind's research proves AGI is not one model — it's an ecosystem of specialists. The critical component: the evaluator that verifies quality at each step. This creates natural economic coordination.
The next constraint will not be intelligence. It will be financial governance and trust between agents. Whoever owns programmable settlement + policy controls becomes the economic control plane of agent ecosystems.
Market

The Numbers Behind Agent Commerce

Agent economic activity is no longer theoretical. The infrastructure is live, volumes are growing, and the governance layer remains unbuilt.

AI Agent Market Size Projections (2024–2030)
Multiple analyst consensus: the agent market is growing 42–49% CAGR
$0B $100B $250B $400B 2024 2025 2026 2027 2028 2029 2030+ $375B $52.6B $7.2B Multi-Agent Systems (48.6% CAGR) — Market.us AI Agent Market (46.3% CAGR) — MarketsAndMarkets
$15T
B2B purchases via AI agents
By 2028 — Gartner
$33T
Stablecoin settlement volume
2025, +72% YoY — Bloomberg
920%
GitHub agentic repo growth
2023–2025 — Index.dev
$2.6–4.4T
Annual value from agentic AI
McKinsey estimate
Initial Target

Who We Serve First

We are not targeting consumer wallets. We are targeting the operators who need programmable spend and settlement controls before they need consumer UX.

AI Infrastructure Teams
Running multi-agent pipelines with budget constraints and auditability requirements.
Autonomous Marketplaces
Service platforms where agents discover, negotiate, and settle with other agents.
API Providers
Monetizing machine traffic with programmatic billing and x402-native micropayments.
Enterprise Agent Swarms
Deploying governed agents with CFO-grade spend controls and approval workflows.
Landscape

Competitive Position

550+ AI-agent crypto projects ($4.34B market cap). None provide the economic governance layer. Each competitor addresses one piece — we integrate the full stack.

CompanyFocusFundingGapOur Advantage
Coinbase AgentKit
Developer SDK
SDK
Part of Coinbase
No governance, no escrow, no dashboard
Full controllership layer
Skyfire
a16z CSX
Network
$9.5M
Payment routing only
Budget governance + escrow
Payman AI
Visa-backed
Payments
$13.8M
Traditional rails, no crypto
Multi-chain + x402 native
Nevermined
"PayPal for AI"
Protocol
$7M
Protocol only, no human oversight
Dashboard + policy + kill switch
Product

What We've Built

Production-deployed Rust backend with 54 API endpoints. Multi-chain wallet support. Escrow engine. Agent marketplace. Policy enforcement. Full lifecycle management.

Programmable Wallets
Budget-bounded wallets with spend policies, multi-chain support (ETH, Base, SOL), and per-agent isolation. Agents operate within mandated constraints.
Escrow Engine
Milestone-based settlement with verification checkpoints. Funds release only when outputs are validated. Built-in dispute resolution.
Policy Enforcement
Daily caps, per-transaction limits, per-agent budgets, allowlisted contracts. Deterministic rules that cannot be prompt-injected. Kill switch for instant halt.
Agent Marketplace
Two-sided marketplace. Register agents, discover specialists, issue mandates with escrow-backed settlement. Reputation scoring.
Cost Attribution
Per-agent spend tracking, anomaly detection, pipeline attribution. Know which agent spent how much on what. The CFO layer for autonomous operations.
Audit Trail
Every transaction logged with full attribution chain, receipts, and settlement proofs. Compliance-ready from day one.
Live and deployed. Rust backend, 54 API endpoints, JWT + SIWE authentication, real-time data, multi-chain wallet support. Launch App →
Business Model

Revenue Architecture

Five interlocking revenue streams. We make money when our users make money. 85%+ gross margins at scale, enabled by L2 settlement costs under $0.001/txn.

Why Traditional Rails Fail for Agent Commerce
Traditional payment rails charge $0.30+ per transaction. Agent micropayments are $0.001–$25.
TransactionStripe (2.9%+$0.30)PayPal (3.49%+$0.49)AgentPAY (0.15%)Savings
$0.01 micropayment$0.30 (3,029%)$0.49 (4,999%)$0.0000299.9%
$0.10 API call$0.30 (303%)$0.49 (493%)$0.0001599.9%
$1.00 agent task$0.33 (33%)$0.52 (52%)$0.001599.5%
$25 agent job$1.03 (4.1%)$1.36 (5.5%)$0.03896.3%
$500 escrow$14.80 (2.96%)$17.94 (3.59%)$0.7594.9%

Five Revenue Streams

STREAM 1 • 55% 0.10–0.25%
Transaction Fees
Every payment routed through AgentPAY. No hidden fees, no monthly minimums, no per-transaction floor.
STREAM 2 • 15% 1.0%
Escrow Fees
1.0% flat on escrow creation. Covers contract deployment, milestone verification, dispute resolution. Releases are free.
STREAM 3 • 18% SaaS Dashboard Tiers
FREE
$0
forever
3 agent wallets
1K txns/month
Basic dashboard
Community support
PRO
$49
/month
25 agent wallets
50K txns/month
Full analytics
Escrow + guardrails
POPULAR
BUSINESS
$199
/month
100 agent wallets
500K txns/month
Custom guardrails
API access + priority
ENTERPRISE
$499
/month
Unlimited wallets
Compliance suite
Multi-team RBAC
Dedicated + SLAs
STREAM 4 • 8% $1.50/1K
API Metering
$1.50 per 1,000 API calls beyond tier. Volume discount to $0.80/1K at 1M+ calls.
STREAM 5 • 4% 2.5%
Marketplace Take Rate
2.5% of mandate value when agents are engaged through the AgentPAY marketplace (2027+).
Financial Model

Growth Projections

Base case: 0.02% TAM capture in Year 1, scaling to 1.0% by 2030. Projections are directional estimates based on cited third-party research.

Revenue Projection (2026–2030)
$0 $50M $100M $150M $2.4M 2026 $8.7M 2027 $24M 2028 $67M 2029 $147M 2030
Detailed 5-Year Model
Metric20262027202820292030
Agent Wallets10,00050,000250,000800,0002,000,000
Monthly Txn Volume$1.5M$7.5M$37.5M$120M$300M
Annual Revenue$2.4M$8.7M$24M$67M$147M
Gross Margin78%82%85%87%89%
Net Revenue Retention135%140%145%150%
Market Share (TAM)0.02%0.05%0.12%0.35%1.0%
Key Assumptions
10K wallets by end-2026
250K wallets by end-2028
Avg $150/mo txn volume per wallet
20% of wallets use escrow
Unit Economics
CAC: $12 (dev-led growth)
LTV: $840 (7-yr blended)
LTV:CAC: 70:1
Gross Margin: 85%+
Comparable Benchmarks
Skyfire: $9.5M at pre-revenue
Payman: $13.8M at pre-product
x402: 50M+ txns in 9 months
Stripe: $3.7T processed
Risks

Risk Acknowledgement

We Recognize

Agent adoption may outpace governance tooling — creating a window where agents transact before controls are in place.
Incumbents (Stripe, Coinbase) may bundle wallet functionality into existing products, compressing margins on basic features.
Reputation systems are susceptible to manipulation — requiring ongoing investment in anti-gaming mechanisms.
Regulatory environments will evolve — particularly around autonomous financial transactions and agent identity.

Our Defensibility

Deep integration into agent orchestration workflows — not a surface-level plugin.
Policy-driven budget enforcement that incumbents would need to rebuild from scratch.
Escrow-first settlement architecture — governance is the product, not an add-on.
Programmable verification hooks — embedded infrastructure, not an interface layer.
Roadmap

Execution Timeline

Practical milestones tied to the agent economy buildout. Each phase unlocks the next revenue layer.

Q1 2026 ✓
Product MVP & Core Infrastructure
Rust backend (54 endpoints), escrow engine, multi-chain wallet, agent marketplace, JWT + SIWE auth. Deployed and live.
Q2 2026
Audit & Testnet Launch
Escrow contract audit. Base Sepolia testnet deployment. Open beta with 50 early-access teams. Agent SDK (TypeScript + Python).
Q3 2026
Mainnet Launch & Onboarding
Base mainnet escrow contracts. Real USDC settlement. Self-serve agent registration. LangChain/CrewAI/AutoGen plugins.
Q4 2026
Revenue & Pre-Seed
First paying customers. Transaction fee + escrow fee live. Agent reputation on-chain. Raise $1.5–3M pre-seed. Target: $15K MRR.
H1 2027
Agent-to-Agent Settlement
Autonomous agents discover, mandate, and settle with other agents. Multi-step pipelines with automatic escrow splits.
H2 2027
Seed Round & Enterprise
Enterprise dashboard with team wallets, approval workflows, audit trails. SOC 2 Type I. Raise $5–8M seed.
2028
Multi-Chain & API Economy
Expand to Ethereum L1, Solana, Arbitrum. Cross-chain escrow. Open API for third-party platforms.
2029+
Series A & Market Leadership
Dominant governance layer for agent commerce. 150K+ wallets, 5M+ monthly transactions. Raise $15–25M Series A.
The Ask

The Programmable Economic Substrate for Agent Commerce

$3–5M
Seed Round Target
18 mo
Runway to Series A
$15T
B2B Agent Purchases by 2028

As agent ecosystems mature, autonomous actors will hire other agents, compete on price and performance, execute micro-contracts, and accumulate reputational capital.

The infrastructure they will need is not payments. It is policy, settlement logic, and trust infrastructure — programmable controllership for economic coordination between machines.

AgentPAY becomes the programmable economic substrate for agent commerce. Not just payments — but budget governance, escrowed settlement, and auditable trust.

Sources

Research Citations

Market & Macro
• Gartner — "$15T B2B agent purchases by 2028"
• Gartner — "40% enterprise apps with agents by end-2026"
• Gartner — "1,445% surge in multi-agent inquiries"
• Microsoft — "80% Fortune 500 deploying active agents"
• McKinsey — "$2.6–4.4T value from agentic AI"
• Market.us — "Multi-agent market $375B by 2034"
• MarketsAndMarkets — "AI agent market $52.6B by 2030"
• Index.dev — "920% GitHub agentic repo growth"
Protocols & Commerce
• Coinbase — x402 Protocol, 50M+ transactions
• Coinbase — Agentic Wallets, Feb 2026
• Google — AP2 Protocol, 60+ partners, Sep 2025
• OpenAI + Stripe — ACP, 1M+ merchants
• Bloomberg — "Stablecoin volume $33T, +72% YoY"
• BaseScan — "Base L2 txn cost <$0.001"
• Google DeepMind — "Scaling Agent Systems"
Competitors & Frameworks
• Skyfire — "$9.5M raised, a16z CSX"
• Payman AI — "$13.8M raised, Visa-backed"
• Nevermined — "$7M raised"
• LangChain — "28M downloads/mo, 99K+ stars"
• CrewAI — "60% Fortune 500"
• Microsoft AutoGen — "40%+ Fortune 100"