- Franklin Templeton, which manages about US$1.8 trillion, identified agentic AI as the “killer” use case that will drive mainstream blockchain adoption.
- Autonomous agents cannot pass bank identity checks, so they will settle on networks such as Solana and BNB Chain that clear in seconds rather than Visa’s one to three business days.
- McKinsey projects agentic commerce at US$3 trillion by 2030, though agent-initiated payments sit outside existing identity and consumer-protection rules.
Franklin Templeton has identified agentic AI as the breakthrough application that will finally push blockchain into mainstream use, arguing that autonomous software agents shut out of the banking system will settle their payments on public networks instead.
Sandy Kaul, Head of Digital Assets and Innovation, stated:
Blockchain will be pivotal in allowing agentic AI to realize its potential for consumer transactions, and the growth of agentic AI is likely to become the ‘killer’ use case that drives blockchain adoption.
Sandy Kaul, Head of Digital Assets and Innovation The argument, set out in a Franklin Templeton digital assets note published Wednesday, reframes crypto’s adoption problem as a machine-payments problem.
Agentic AI describes software that acts, pays and decides without constant human approval. Because such agents cannot open bank accounts or clear know-your-customer checks, Kaul contends they have no route onto card networks and must transact on decentralised rails.
Each agent generates a payment token embedding rules governing which merchants may accept the token, the maximum spend per transaction, and how long the token remains valid.
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Card Networks Fall Short
Kaul characterised conventional card rails as structurally unsuited to machine commerce, citing high fees and settlement windows measured in days. Franklin Templeton’s note flagged Solana at 6,284 transactions per second, Aptos at 12,933 and BNB Chain at 3,252, against a Visa network that handles between 1,700 and 10,000.
Settlement, not throughput, is where the gap widens, with Visa taking one to three business days to clear a payment, while the blockchain networks settle simultaneously.
A joint Visa and Artemis report reached a similar conclusion, noting that cards built for human commerce lack the infrastructure for agent micropayments, which demand near-zero fees and near-instant finality. Visa’s crypto division and payments firm Tempo each launched AI payment tools in March 2026.
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