An analysis said the commercialisation of an autonomous AI agent economy is being blocked by bottlenecks in payment infrastructure.

Cointelegraph reported that Visa and Artemis said in a joint report that existing global card payment networks are insufficient to handle high-frequency, low-value payments by AI agents.

The report said existing card systems were designed for low-frequency human commerce. It said AI agent payments would require infrastructure that enables near-zero fees and faster settlement to be commercially viable.

Visa and Artemis said AI agents crossed a threshold in core capabilities in mid-2025. They said agents can now find unfamiliar APIs, assess prices and decide on payments autonomously, but the current infrastructure gap is blocking mass adoption.

Some agent payment standards are already showing signs of user adoption. Coinbase's x402 payment protocol processed $15 million in arbitrage volume across more than 109 million arbitrage trades after its launch in May 2025. In October 2025, monthly transactions rose to 3.8 million from 40,000, and it processed 38 million transactions in October alone.

The report said a single machine payment framework could support both stablecoin-based flows and card transactions. It said this structure could provide a path for card networks to enter agent payment flows.