MoonPay Hands AI Agents the Wallet, Hopes They Don't Spend It All on JPEGs 🤖💸

MoonPay has launched PayBox, a payment vault that allows users of ChatGPT and Claude to authorize AI assistants to execute crypto transactions directly from a chat interface. Users connect a crypto wallet and payment methods to the assistant, which then prepares actions such as token swaps, crosschain transfers and DeFi interactions based on natural-language prompts. Transactions can be approved individually with a passkey or executed automatically within predefined spending limits, according to MoonPay.

PayBox uses multi-party computation and trusted execution environments to safeguard wallet keys, with MoonPay stating that neither the AI assistant nor the company itself can independently access user funds. The vault supports multiple blockchains and payment methods, including debit cards, bank accounts, Apple Pay and PayPal, and offers a software development kit so developers can embed the tool into their own AI applications.

PayBox also supports x402, an open payment protocol originally developed by Coinbase that enables AI agents to conduct internet-native payments. The protocol was contributed to the Linux Foundation in April 2026 and now operates as a vendor-neutral industry standard. Coinbase has continued expanding the x402 ecosystem, launching tools in June that let AI agents accept USDC payments, trade crypto, discover paid services through an AI marketplace and process high-frequency micropayments more efficiently.

Amazon Web Services integrated x402 into its Bedrock AgentCore Payments service earlier this year, while Fireblocks launched an x402-compatible payments framework for AI agents and joined the x402 Foundation. Network activity has tracked adoption: a June 3 report from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis said agentic payments on Coinbase's Base network surpassed 100 million transactions within roughly nine months, with the protocol's public dashboard showing more than 12.7 million transactions over the past 30 days across participating services at the time of writing.