// GLOSSARY -- AGENTIC FINANCE

What are Agentic Payments?

1 min read Updated

Agentic payments are transactions initiated and executed by AI agents autonomously, without per-payment human approval. They include agent-to-service, agent-to-agent, and agent-to-merchant flows.

WHY IT MATTERS

Traditional payments require human initiation. Agentic payments remove the human from the per-transaction loop — the agent decides, negotiates, and executes.

This enables: agents paying for compute on demand, negotiating service contracts with other agents, purchasing APIs via micropayments — all at machine speed.

The challenge is trust. Agent decisions may be wrong, manipulated, or misaligned. This is why agentic payments require dedicated control infrastructure.

HOW POLICYLAYER USES THIS

PolicyLayer governs agentic payments — ensuring every AI-initiated transaction follows predefined rules, whether paying for APIs, settling with agents, or purchasing services.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

What currencies?
Primarily stablecoins (USDC, USDT) on L2s like Base — stable for budgeting, low fees for micropayments.
How fast?
On L2s, seconds to confirm. Policy evaluation adds milliseconds. End-to-end under 5 seconds — orders of magnitude faster than traditional rails.
Reversible?
Generally no — blockchain is final. Pre-transaction controls are critical. PolicyLayer validates before execution because there's no chargeback.

FURTHER READING

Enforce policies on every tool call

Intercept is the open-source MCP proxy that enforces YAML policies on AI agent tool calls. No code changes needed.

npx -y @policylayer/intercept
github.com/policylayer/intercept →
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