{ "video": { "id": "-AOxpwVeIWw", "title": "Why AI Agents Still Won't Pay for Anything — Jan Curn, Apify", "duration": 1237, "upload_date": null, "channel": "AI Engineer", "source": "AI Engineer", "event_format": "" }, "analysis": { "video_id": "-AOxpwVeIWw", "title": "Why AI Agents Still Won't Pay for Anything — Jan Curn, Apify", "one_liner": "Agent payment protocols such as x402 and MPP see almost no real volume. Curn argues this is not because services are missing: they are competing with API keys, which are more convenient, and every step of the funnel (need, setup, discovery/trust, purchase) still has friction.", "summary": "Jan Curn of Apify runs a marketplace of about 80,000 'actors' (automation and data-extraction tools). He counts more than a dozen agent payment standards that appeared in roughly 18 months, yet on-chain scanners show only about $1M in 30-day volume on x402 and about $1.5K on MPP. He rules out low supply, because Apify, Exa, Perplexity and others already earn far more than that from agents through API keys. He treats the problem as a demand-side sales funnel: need, setup, finding trusted services, then buying. Each stage has friction. He expects it to ease through better models, always-on personal agents, the end of token subsidies, crypto wallets built into major agent platforms, verified catalogs, and variable-price payment schemes.", "key_points": [ "The timeline of standards he lists: L402 from Lightning Labs (mid-2020); Mastercard agent payments (April last year); Coinbase's x402 (May 2025, which he calls probably the most popular); Visa's KYA pay/Skyfire; Google's AP2; ACP from OpenAI and Stripe; Visa's TAP; UCP from Google and Shopify; Alipay's ACTP; MPP from Stripe and Tempo; Alipay's agent mobile protocol; UnionPay's APOP; OKX's protocol; and a second Mastercard offering.", "He thinks crypto has a very good chance of winning because it is far cheaper than cards, PayPal or bank debit for small transactions and, done right, has no single owner. It also has no chargebacks. Refunds exist but are optional for sellers, and that matters because 'there are an infinite number of agents' that would abuse chargebacks.", "x402scan and MPP scan show 30-day volume of about $1 million on x402 and about $1.5 thousand on MPP, which he calls 'practically nothing'.", "Supply is not the bottleneck. Apify, Exa, Perplexity and others are listed in agent-payment directories and together make far more than $1M a month from agents, but through API keys rather than autonomous discovery and payment.", "Agent payments compete with API keys, not with Visa. Developers simply sign up, put an API key in Claude or an MCP config, and pay by credit card.", "Token subsidies remove the reason to buy. About $100 a month on Claude can buy roughly $14,000 of tokens at maximum use, so agents build things from scratch instead of buying services. He expects this to end, perhaps around an OpenAI or Anthropic IPO.", "Trust needs intermediaries, as it historically did with markets and reviews. Verified catalogs and marketplaces are emerging, such as Claude's connector catalog, which Anthropic checks thoroughly, and Apify's own store.", "Fixed price per API call is not enough for real work, which needs variable, pay-per-use pricing. x402's 'up to' scheme allowed variable cost but did not stop a buyer double-spending before on-chain settlement. Apify worked around this with exact-plus-refund (for example, charge $10 up front, consume $2, return the rest), but that requires the agent to trust the seller and adds blockchain fees. An escrow-based scheme Apify added about a week before the talk finally solves it. MPP has added sessions." ], "takeaways": [ "Work out now how to sell your service to autonomous agents, because 'implementation can be a little more complicated than you think'. Waiting too long risks missing the train.", "Price for variable, pay-per-use work, not just a fixed price per call. Use escrow- or session-based schemes (x402's newer schemes, MPP sessions) rather than the 'up to' scheme, which allows double-spending.", "If you need to charge before doing costly work, settle the payment before delivering. Otherwise the money may never arrive.", "Get listed in trusted, verified catalogs and marketplaces, because agents need intermediaries to decide which unknown services to trust.", "Hand agents budgets step by step, for example $5, then $50, then $500 per job, as trust builds. Losing $50 is far less damaging than a data leak." ], "topics": [ "agent payments", "agentic commerce", "crypto", "stablecoins", "payment protocols", "marketplaces", "trust", "pricing" ], "tools": [ "Apify", "x402 (Coinbase)", "L402 (Lightning Labs)", "MPP (Stripe, Tempo)", "AP2 (Google)", "ACP (OpenAI, Stripe)", "UCP (Google, Shopify)", "TAP (Visa)", "Skyfire / KYA pay (Visa)", "Mastercard agent payments", "Alipay", "UnionPay APOP", "OKX", "Coinbase", "Exa", "Perplexity", "Claude", "Anthropic", "OpenAI", "ChatGPT", "MCP", "x402scan", "MPP scan" ], "quotes": [ { "text": "So it's not really like agency payments compete with Visa. They compete with API keys because it's simply a more convenient way.", "at": "10:04", "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AOxpwVeIWw&t=604s" }, { "text": "there are an infinite number of agents and they just want to steal all your money or take your services for free.", "at": "06:31", "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AOxpwVeIWw&t=391s" }, { "text": "if you lose $50, that's sad, but it's not a disaster like you have, unless someone posts your email, which is much worse.", "at": "11:11", "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AOxpwVeIWw&t=671s" }, { "text": "I mean, it's practically nothing.", "at": "07:38", "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AOxpwVeIWw&t=458s" } ], "words": 4613 }, "summary_url": "/#-AOxpwVeIWw", "transcript": { "html": "/transcripts/-AOxpwVeIWw.html", "txt": "/transcripts/-AOxpwVeIWw.txt", "vtt": "/transcripts/-AOxpwVeIWw.vtt" } }