The AI agent economy is taking off, propelled by a transformation that will reshape how machines and humans interact. Its next phase will be massively expanded by payments between agents and between agents and humans.
The emerging landscape of AI task management
As AI agents grow in capabilities, individuals are delegating tasks to single agents that can perform tasks on their behalf such as research, curation, scheduling, travel planning, or email drafting.
Companies are “employing” agents to perform a wide range of functions, including customer service, content creation, sales outreach, invoice tracking, and internal communications.
The complexity of multi-agent collaboration
Multi-agent systems are bringing together a variety of specialized AI agents to collaborate for better outcomes in more complex situations. In simple configurations these agents have clearly defined tasks and responsibilities.
However, a critical component of the definition of an agent is that it has some degree of autonomy. As the systems we build become more complex, we will need to give more responsibility to our agents.
The threshold of autonomous payments
One of the most important thresholds is giving agents the ability and permission to make payments. In Humans + AI multi-agent systems, agents could make payments to humans for particular tasks.
In 2014 I wrote about the potential of machine-to-machine payments, enabling autonomous agents or devices to make payments between themselves. Scenarios included autonomous cars making payments to each other to facilitate paths, or systems negotiating bandwidth pricing with each other depending on demand.
Infrastructure for the AI economy
A number of companies are now enabling this key infrastructure for a massive explosion in the complexity of the economy.
Skyfire describes itself as “the financial stack for the AI economy”, enabling agents to discover and pay for the services they need to fulfil their tasks, applying specific business rules.
Payman, with a tagline of “AI that pays humans”, recognizes that humans will still play important non-substitutable roles, and enables agent systems to pay humans to do work to achieve its objectives.
The future of agent-driven economics
This transformation represents more than just a technological shift—it signals the emergence of an entirely new economic paradigm. As agent-to-agent payments become commonplace, we’re likely to see the rapid multiplication of economic entities and interactions.
The implications are profound: new markets will emerge, novel forms of value creation will develop, and the very nature of economic agency will evolve. The challenge ahead lies in creating robust frameworks that can manage this complexity while ensuring these systems remain aligned with human interests and values.