Snippings

xxx

Agents will need permission to access apps, APIs and websites if they are ever going to call an Uber or book a flight, the kind of expectation that has been established over the past year.

Humans type passwords or use facial and fingerprint recognition to sign into their accounts, but AI agents require new methods of authorization to address the intermediary role between humans and the services they want to use

From: AI Agents Face One Last, Big Obstacle – WSJ.

xxx

xxx

Just add a single line of code in your app, and you can require a USDC payment for each incoming request.

paymentMiddleware(“0xYourAddress”, {“/your-endpoint”: “$0.01”});
// and thats it!
If a request arrives without payment, the server responds with HTTP 402, prompting the client to pay and retry.

HTTP/1.1 402 Payment Required
x402 allows any web developer to accept crypto payments without the complexity of having to interact with the blockchain.

From: x402.org.

xxx

xxx

x402 solves this by resurrecting the HTTP 402 “Payment Required” status code, a dormant feature of the web designed for seamless payment requests within standard HTTP interactions. Now, clients—whether humans, scripts, or AI agents—can respond to payment prompts instantly using widely-used stablecoins (like USDC), making transactions as effortless as loading a webpage.
Specifically, x402 enables:
Servers to instantly issue standardized 402 Payment Required responses for premium digital resources.
Embedded, automatic payment instructions directly within standard HTTP responses.
Seamless integration into existing HTTP infrastructure, eliminating the need for special wallet interfaces, layers, or separate authentication mechanisms.
The practical impact is clear: payments become instant, seamless, and embedded directly into the internet—unlocking new business models, frictionless global transactions, and fully autonomous software interactions.

From: Introducing x402: a new standard for internet-native payments | Coinbase.

xxx

xxx

The recent rapid acceleration of generative AI and the imminent prospect of more ubiquitous agentic AI systems—artificial intelligence software capable of autonomously performing complex tasks, making decisions, and interacting convincingly—has renewed interest in digital identity writ large. Agentic AI is projected to become more prevalent in the immediate future, as human users proactively delegate tasks to credentialed agents.

From: Lessons from National Digital ID Systems for Privacy, Security, and Trust in the AI Age | TechPolicy.Press.

xxx

xxx

We expect digital pound intermediaries to function within a structured ecosystem, with defined obligations, roles and relationships and with a clear framework of their rights, rules and responsibilities. They will provide the user-facing services that allow individuals and businesses to access and use digital pounds, while the Bank will maintain the core ledger.

PIPs will provide the primary access to digital pound services for users. This will include providing wallet services, initiating payments and managing user interactions with the digital pound. PIPs would integrate with the core ledger via application programming interfaces (APIs).

ESIPs will provide value-added services such as payment initiation and financial data tools. ESIPs are unlikely to require integration with the core ledger, instead working with PIPs to facilitate connections with users’ digital pound accounts. However, we are open to reconsidering this in light of evidence of potential user-facing services that would benefit from access to the core ledger.

The Bank will build and operate the core infrastructure, maintaining ledger integrity, and processing and settling payments made between users. This structured approach allows for competition and innovation while ensuring consistency and security.

From: Design note – Intermediary roles and scheme rulebook | Bank of England.

xxx

In one of the recent reports, McKinsey said that what they label “credentialling and identity” is the first of their key control points in the agentic economy becaue agents need secure, user-granted permission before they can initiate transactions across multiple institutions. Therefore, as they point out, organisations that already manage high-trust credentials start with a clear advantage. They go on to highlight some success factors: zero-trust architectures that never assume persistent access, dynamic consent via standardized protocols (for example, OAuth2/OpenID Connect) and continuous audit trails.

I agree with their emphasis, of course. In facr, I have just co-authored a paper on Know-Your-Agent (KYA) with Jelena Hoffart of Mastercard. The paper is called “Know your agent: Enabling autonomous financial services” and it is published in the Journal of Digital Banking, Volume 10, Number 2, pages 123-134 (Autumn/Fall 2025), and it explores the identification, authentication and authorisation of non-human customers. This is a topic that is both central to the evolution of the online economy and intellectually fascinating, which is why I spend so much time looking at strategies in the field.

If I want to grant my agent Dave1A permission to go and book flghts on British Airways and book hotels on Hilton, then British Airways and Hilton need Dave1A to present a credential that says that the agent is allowed to book on my behalf together with my loyalty identifiers and maybe some other attributes.

Persona, the verified identify platform used by a host of fintechs (including Robinhood, Brex and OpenAI) has raised $200 million at a $2 billion valuation. The company says that rise of AI agents, increasingly sophisticated AI-driven fraud, regulatory fragmentation, and growing privacy expectations have created a far more complex — and constantly evolving — identity landscape. As Rick Song, CEO of Persona, puts it “Identity in an AI-driven world isn’t about ticking a box, and the question is no longer ‘is this a bot or not?’ but rather ‘who is the bot acting on behalf of, and what is their intent?

 

 

OK, I think that is straightforward and it is already clear that agentic commerce will be enabled by standard verifiable credentials (VCs) of one form of another, we do not need to speculate about that. But it is of course interesting to speculate on who will define what such credentials might look like and the framework in which they will work. Mastercard and Visa are obvious players in that space, but it is early days.

 

This was one of the topics discussed at Checkout.com’s recent conference in Venice, where they announced a pilot with a major UK retailer to place orders via Microsoft Co-Pilot but as Geoffrey Barraclough highlighted in his report on the event, the big question isn’t how this technology will actually work but who will pay who and how the rewards and liabilities will be shared between merchants and agents, platform and payments processor.

xxx

It has gone largely unnoticed that time spent on social media peaked in 2022 and has since gone into steady decline, according to an analysis of the online habits of 250,000 adults in more than 50 countries carried out for the FT by the digital audience insights company GWI.

From: Have we passed peak social media?.

xxx

xxx

In years to come, we may well look back on September 2025 as the point at which social media jumped the shark and began rapidly accelerating its transition from the place to be seen (through a flattering Instagram filter), to a gaudy backwater of the internet inhabited by those with nothing better to do.

From: Have we passed peak social media?.

xxx

xxx

Well, what do you know, Tether has announced that Rumble will be a key launch platform for its planned US stablecoin USAT. It most likely won’t end up being the only one, but it’s an intriguing partnership for both Tether and Rumble.

From: Tether+Rumble, stablecoins as money – by Noelle Acheson.

xxx

xxx

BBVA customers in Spain with an iPhone 15 Pro or a newer model can head to the cards section in their banking app, select the Visa card they want to personalise, and either use one of their own images as a base or describe the image they want to create.

Apple Intelligence’s Image Playground will then generate several proposals, and the design chosen by the customer will be instantly updated in the BBVA app wallet.

Initially, the feature is only available for virtual cards but customers will soon be able to design physical cards and have them delivered to their home.

From: BBVA lets customers use Apple AI to create their own card designs.

xxx