In the US, Stablecoins and AI Agents Payments Discussed

October 19 marked the first full day of Money20/20 USA in Las Vegas. Key topics included stablecoins beyond exchange trading and the verification of AI agents purchasing on behalf of individuals. Mastercard's Executive Vice President, Ann Johnson, reminded that stablecoins account for nearly 30% of crypto transactions. A similar estimate was previously given by TRM Labs. According to Johnson, this scale signifies a shift from experimentation to practice. Keith Vander List, head of the UK fintech BVNK in the US, believes that tokens have remained a tool for traders for too long, while the growth potential lies in traditional payments. In March, Mastercard agreed to acquire BVNK for up to $1.8 billion, and the deal was closed in August. Alex Garn, Chief Product Officer at Borderless, noted that companies are no longer seeking access to infrastructure but are launching their own services on it. He linked the main barrier to mass adoption to the nature of finance: money will always be a trust-based business. Keyrails co-founder Rajpal Hangura acknowledged that clients still inquire about the mechanics of stablecoins, although no one ever asked about internal bank transfers. The industry needs to achieve a level of familiarity with such assets.

In a separate session, David Nandwa, creator of the Kenyan fintech HoneyCoin, shared that in Africa, the digital dollar first ensures stability in transactions between counterparties in different countries, and then reduces their cost. Key scenarios on the continent include international trade and remittance of earnings by migrants to their families. Borderless CEO Kevin Lehtiniitty expects that the next major users will be Uber, Airbnb, and other platforms with mass global payouts of small amounts, as conducting them through correspondent bank transfers is extremely inefficient. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi mentioned in June 2025 that the company is exploring such tokens to reduce the cost of moving money globally. Yellow Card COO Maria Oldem noted that transnational corporations are eyeing the technology for access to emerging market currencies and efficient treasury management.

The second theme of the day was the identification of autonomous clients. On the Know Your Agent panel, VGS data tokenization service head Chuck Yu stated that the financial industry began responding to the emergence of AI assistants about a year and a half ago, but credit organizations have only seriously addressed the issue in the past couple of months. Kumar Senthil, head of the agency commerce platform Firmly, pointed out that web resources are still designed for humans, and there is no basic infrastructure for AI buyers. Amir Sargangi, founder of the Skyfire AI agent payment network, estimated the share of machines in internet traffic at 60%. The French conglomerate Thales calculated that in 2025, the figure exceeded 53%. Sargangi explained that traditional anti-fraud systems fail: a legitimate bot might access a site from IP addresses in three different locations, which was traditionally considered a clear sign of fraud. Yu suggested that with proper verification of digital assistants and set limits, part of the responsibility could be taken by issuers and card networks in the future. Currently, losses fall on sellers. He identified the primary task for the near future as the first handshake, the moment when a user first entrusts the program with card details. Recall that in June, Mastercard launched Agent Pay for Machines, a service for autonomous payments between machines with stablecoin support.