The co-founders of Payouts.com envision a future where agent payments are empowered by stablecoin infrastructures and tailored governance systems designed for enterprise accountability.

Summary

  • Payouts.com CEO Leor Ceder emphasizes that programmability, rather than just wallets, will dictate the trustworthiness of AI agents in enterprises by 2027.
  • Co-founder Barak Hirchson identifies five essential controls for ensuring the secure and auditable spending of autonomous agents at scale.
  • Stablecoins excel in cross-border transactions and machine-to-API micropayments, while programmable infrastructure will determine the optimal payment rails in other scenarios.

The vision shared by Payouts.com co-founders Leor Ceder and Barak Hirchson highlights an upcoming era in AI-driven commerce, characterized by stablecoin ecosystems and sophisticated programmable control layers. They argue that while wallets form the bedrock of these transactions, the true enterprise value lies in the governance mechanisms that oversee them.

This perspective adds depth to the wallet-focused discussion that currently dominates the agent payments landscape. A research forecast by Juniper anticipates that cross-border B2B stablecoin transactions will escalate to a staggering $5 trillion by 2035, a significant surge from just $13.4 billion projected for 2026, predicting that B2B will account for 85% of total stablecoin transaction value.

Identifying Stablecoin Advantages and Optimal Rail Selection

Hirchson, the Chief Solutions Officer at Payouts.com, elaborated on how rail selection is fundamentally influenced by the recipient’s circumstances, including country, payment method, urgency, transaction amount, and associated costs. Stablecoins clearly dominate in two key scenarios.

The first advantage is in cross-border transactions compared to traditional SWIFT methods, where exorbitant wire fees and foreign exchange spreads can consume up to 5% of a transaction’s value. The second is within machine-to-API micropayments, exemplified by the x402 standard, which is already facilitating pay-per-call API invoicing in stablecoins. According to Crypto.news, AI-enabled agents have processed $73 million through 176 million transactions using cryptocurrency, with USDC being responsible for a remarkable 98.6% of these transactions.

Hirchson stated, “PIX in Brazil settles transactions within ten seconds at no cost, and UPI in India handles hundreds of millions of daily transactions at negligible expense. Agents that succeed will be those capable of selecting the most suitable rail for each transaction, rather than being tethered to a single method dictated by a limited wallet.”

Five Essential Controls for Autonomous Agents

Hirchson outlined five indispensable controls he believes companies should adopt before permitting their agents to make autonomous transactions: scoped credentials, hard caps on spending enforced at the protocol level, cryptographically signed mandates, payment layer idempotency, and a fail-closed posture.

“This encapsulates the essence of programmable spending,” he stated. “You establish parameters once, and the infrastructure guarantees compliance indefinitely, allowing the agent to operate freely within those limitations.” He lamented that while some recently launched wallets have incorporated hard caps and signed mandates, others still offer merely an API key and balance—an arrangement he dubbed the worst-case scenario in the event of a compromised key.

The Future of the Agent Payment Architecture by 2027

Ceder posited that by May 2027, the pivotal question will not center around which stablecoin prevails, but rather on the depth of programmability available for enterprises to dictate agent behaviors, the reliability of policy enforcement, and the clarity of post-transaction compliance proof.

He noted, “The ongoing wallet competition will be reminiscent of the browser wars: overlapping, essential, yet not where lasting value is ultimately generated.” The infrastructure should inherently integrate compliance mechanisms rather than leaving it to the agent, ensuring that every payment is subjected to a thorough evaluation of principals, accounts, and jurisdictions before any funds are transacted.

Enterprises such as Coinbase and Cloudflare have adopted the x402 protocol in order to create a rapidly evolving settlement rail tailored for agents, with the standard recently becoming part of the Linux Foundation. AWS has also integrated x402 into its Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Payments system, while partnerships between Solana and Google have produced Pay.sh as an alternative route.

For Payouts.com, they are placing their bets on the belief that the governance layer built above these infrastructures will become the focal point for enterprise spending, allowing agents to maintain their independence while the constraints surrounding them remain intact.