Franklin Templeton exec crowns AI agents blockchain's "killer" app — Visa gets benched 🤖

Franklin Templeton's head of digital assets and innovation, Sandy Kaul, said AI agents represent the next "killer" use case for blockchain and cryptocurrency, arguing that legacy card networks are unfit for machine-to-machine commerce. In a more-than-1,800-word post on X on Wednesday, Kaul wrote that the AI agent economy will drive demand for blockchain protocols that can host micropayments, since traditional card fees and settlement times are too high and slow for agentic transactions.

Kaul pointed to Aptos, Solana and BNB Chain as networks better suited to the agentic economy, noting that they settle transactions in seconds compared with the one-to-three business-day settlement window of the Visa network. He framed agentic AI as a distinct investment question from the AI-aligned equities most investors buy today, asking, "To capture the AI growth opportunity today, most investors buy shares of AI-aligned companies and related verticals. But will the same playbook work for agentic AI."

A joint report published last Wednesday by Visa and investment thesis platform Artemis reached a similar conclusion, arguing that cards built for low-frequency human commerce are insufficient for AI agents that need infrastructure with near-zero fees and faster settlement to make micropayments commercially viable. Both Visa's crypto division and Stripe-backed Tempo launched AI tools in March, with Visa's product enabling AI agents to make same-day payments.

Adoption signals are beginning to appear. The x402 payment protocol developed by Coinbase processed $15 million in adjusted volume across more than 109 million adjusted transactions since its launch in May 2025, according to the Visa and Artemis report. Separately, South Korea has begun using AI to detect crypto market manipulation, an application covered in a recent industry report on oversight of digital asset trading.