Anchorage launches agentic banking as CEO tips ‘trillion-dollar’ opportunity

Crypto bank Anchorage is launching a new agentic banking service, seeking to give AI agents the ability to access and move money without human interference — an industry that could be worth a trillion dollars, according to its co-founder. 

In an X post on Tuesday, Anchorage co-founder and CEO Nathan McCauley said the firm's new agentic banking infrastructure gives AI agents the ability to access both traditional finance and crypto payment rails.

Blockchain and tech companies have been rushing to prepare themselves for the future of agentic commerce. Firms such as Stripe argued in February that blockchains will need to eventually be able to process between 1 million and 1 billion transactions per second to handle the network demand coming from AI agents.

"Institutions are experimenting with automation across treasury, payments, and procurement, but they’re doing it on top of systems that were never designed for non-human actors," said McCauley.

The new banking service would give AI agents a verifiable ID to transact with, preset spending limits, permissions and policies, along with auditability features to maintain regulatory compliance.

The launch came alongside a partnership with Google Cloud, which will provide the intelligence layer that allows AI agents to "discover, negotiate and coordinate" with each other.

Source: Nathan McCauley

Ripple Labs researcher and former head of product marketing Oliver Segovia said the deal also reflects a shifting trend in which tech labs and regulated banks are working more closely together. 

"Hyperscalers typically viewed banks as tier 1 enterprise customers, but moving forward, we'll start seeing more alliances as labs get deeper into regulated infrastructure and banks build intelligence on top of core systems," he said in a post on X. 

Related: Ripple CEO says market structure bill not a ‘done deal,’ despite stablecoin compromise

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, in my view, set to be a trillion-dollar industry where we are going to have agents paying each other, agents paying merchants, and agents getting paid," he said. 

This isn't the only agentic finance product rolled out in crypto recently.

On Tuesday, the Solana Foundation launched a new gateway service with Google Cloud, allowing AI agents to pay for any APIs using stablecoins on Solana.

On April 30, Tether-backed crypto wallet startup Oobit released a Visa-supported virtual card enabling AI agents to make online purchases with USDT for businesses without requiring human interaction.

The cards are funded with USDT directly from Tether's treasury, enabling agents to keep using capital without needing to top up via fiat on-ramps or conversions.

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