Legacy Payment Rails Can't Handle AI's Microtransactions: Franklin Templeton

Franklin Templeton's Head of Digital Assets and Innovation Sandy Kaul argues that investors chasing the artificial intelligence boom through stocks alone may miss its next phase. According to Kaul, card rails cannot handle $0.001 machine payments, making blockchain tokens the way to capture agentic AI value.

In an article titled 'Agentic AI, The Killer Use Case for Blockchain and Crypto,' Kaul wrote that investors will need to buy cryptocurrencies and altcoins to capture the emerging agentic AI opportunity. Legacy payment rails are unsuited for agentic micropayments, which average $0.001 to purchase a single second of compute or a data query.

Kaul cited external estimates putting agentic commerce 'as high as $3-$5 trillion by 2030,' and said 38% of organizations report they will have AI agents working as team members alongside humans by 2028. The Machine Payments Protocol from Stripe and Visa is evidence that 'software can pay software.'