Wallets for the Bots: Franklin Templeton Taps Blockchains as AI's Next Sugar Daddy 🤖

Franklin Templeton's head of digital assets and innovation, Sandy Kaul, said agentic artificial intelligence represents the next "killer" use case for blockchain and cryptocurrency, arguing in a post on X on Wednesday that autonomous AI agents will require payment infrastructure that legacy card networks cannot provide. Kaul said machine-to-machine micropayments would be uneconomical on networks such as Visa, where fees and one-to-three business-day settlement times make sub-cent transactions impractical, and that public blockchains are better positioned to handle high-frequency, low-value agentic commerce.

Kaul identified Aptos, Solana and the BNB Chain as networks suited to the agentic economy because they settle transactions in seconds, contrasting that speed with the Visa network's longer settlement window. Her thesis aligns with Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire's view that AI agents and blockchain are converging into a single economic system in which software can transact, coordinate and exchange value autonomously. Both executives have pointed to the need for low-cost, programmable payment rails to support autonomous agents that may pay for API calls, computing time or access to datasets.

Adoption signals are beginning to emerge. The x402 payment protocol developed by Coinbase has processed $15 million in adjusted volume across more than 109 million adjusted transactions since its launch in May 2025, according to a joint report published last Wednesday by Visa and investment thesis platform Artemis. The same report argued that traditional cards, built for low-frequency human commerce, are insufficient for AI agents that need infrastructure with near-zero fees and faster settlement to make agentic micropayments commercially viable.

Major payments companies are responding. Visa's crypto division and Stripe-backed Tempo both launched AI tools in March, with Visa's enabling AI agents to make same-day payments. Robinhood launched AI-powered investing tools in May that allow agents to trade stocks and make purchases on behalf of users, and CEO Vlad Tenev has said AI agents will eventually rival the capabilities of human traders, while OpenAI and Anthropic continue to develop increasingly autonomous systems. Kaul framed her more-than-1,800-word post as a challenge to the prevailing AI investment playbook, noting that capturing the AI growth opportunity today has largely meant buying shares of AI-aligned companies and related verticals. She asked whether the same playbook would work for agentic AI, suggesting that the infrastructure layer for machine-to-machine payments may be a more direct way to participate in the next phase of the technology cycle.