Puneet Mehta, CEO and founder of AI customer experience platform Netomi, told CoinDesk that autonomous AI agents will require stablecoin-based payment infrastructure because traditional banking settlement windows are too slow for real-time autonomous transactions. Mehta predicts the customer experience market will expand from roughly $500 billion today to $5 trillion by 2030 as agents move beyond support into sales, conversion, and cross-selling.
The Settlement Speed Problem
The argument centers on a timing mismatch. Traditional banking systems settle transactions over two to three days through manual paperwork and batch processing. An autonomous agent making purchasing decisions, processing refunds, or executing cross-border payments in real time cannot pause and wait for ACH clearing.
“An autonomous agent cannot rely on traditional banking systems that take days to settle transactions via manual paperwork,” Mehta told CoinDesk. “To achieve true end-to-end automation, these software systems require always-on capital rails that operate 24/7.”
Netomi recently raised $110 million in a Series C round backed by Accenture Ventures and Adobe Ventures, bringing total funding to $168 million. The company’s clients include Delta, United Airlines, MetLife, ESPN, and ATB Financial.
Consensus 2026 Alignment
Mehta’s thesis matches what other crypto executives argued at Consensus 2026 in May. Bridge executive Lindsey Einhaus (Bridge was acquired by Stripe for $1.1 billion) and Deus X Capital CEO Tim Grant both positioned AI agents and large corporates as the two biggest growth drivers for stablecoin adoption, according to CoinDesk’s Consensus coverage. Einhaus specifically cited AI-powered micropayments as a major emerging use case where stablecoin rails reduce per-transaction costs below what card networks can offer.
Separately, Chainalysis projected in April that stablecoin adjusted transaction volumes will reach $719 trillion by 2035, driven by organic adoption. Stablecoins moved more than $35 trillion on blockchain rails last year, though only about 1% was for real-world payments, per McKinsey and Artemis Analytics.
Early Signals in the Agent Stack
The infrastructure is already being built. MetaMask released Agent Wallet in early access in June, a non-custodial wallet purpose-built for AI agents to execute autonomous trades on Ethereum with user-defined spending limits. That product addresses the custody side of the problem. Mehta’s argument addresses the settlement side: even if an agent has a wallet, it needs rails that clear instantly.
The gap between thesis and reality remains wide. Most enterprise software companies still rely on traditional payment providers and banking networks. No major agent platform has integrated stablecoin settlement as a default payment method. The question is whether the speed advantage of blockchain rails will outweigh the integration costs and regulatory complexity that come with stablecoin adoption at enterprise scale.
Mehta’s framing, though, reframes the relationship between AI capital and crypto capital. “The idea that AI is simply sucking capital away from crypto is a fundamental misunderstanding of where technology is heading,” he told CoinDesk. “We are not in a zero-sum battle for venture dollars.”