Cryptobank Anchorage is launching a new agentic banking service that aims to give AI agents the ability to access and move money without human intervention – an industry that could be worth a trillion dollars according to its co-founder.
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Blockchain and technology companies are rushing to prepare for the future of agentic trading. Companies like Stripe argued in February that blockchains will eventually need to be able to process between 1 million and 1 billion transactions per second to meet the network demands of AI agents.
“Institutions are experimenting with automation in treasury, payments and procurement, but they are doing so on top of systems that were never designed for non-human actors,” McCauley said.
The new banking service would give AI agents a verifiable ID to conduct transactions, preset spending limits, permissions and policies, along with auditability features to maintain regulatory compliance.
The launch was accompanied by a partnership with Google Cloud, which will provide the intelligence layer that allows AI agents to “discover, negotiate, and coordinate” each other.
Source: Nathan McCauley
Ripple Labs researcher and former head of product marketing Oliver Segovia said the deal also reflects a changing trend of technology labs and regulated banks working more closely together.
“Hyperscalers have typically viewed banks as level 1 corporate customers, but in the future we will see more alliances as labs delve deeper into regulated infrastructure and banks build intelligence on top of core systems,” he said in a post on X.
Speaking at the Consensus 2026 conference in Miami on Tuesday, McCauley argued that the sector will be one of the most important “trends of the next decade.”
“This is going to be, in my opinion, a trillion-dollar industry with agents paying each other, agents paying traders and agents getting paid,” he said.
This isn’t the only financial product recently rolled out in crypto. On April 30, Tether-backed crypto wallet startup Oobit released a Visa-backed virtual card that allows AI agents to make online purchases with $USDT for companies without human interaction.
The cards are financed with $USDT directly from Tether’s coffers, allowing agents to continue deploying capital without having to replenish via fiat on-ramps or conversions.
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