Alchemy, a blockchain infrastructure provider, has unveiled the private beta of AgentPay, which is designed to facilitate interoperability among various AI agent payment protocols.

Supported by major firms such as Coinbase, Stripe, Visa, and Circle, this platform is anticipated for public release in the near future.

AgentPay functions as a translation layer that routes payment instructions between different agentic payment protocols like x402, MPP, and L402 without holding onto funds. Merchants can simplify their operations by registering their existing APIs with Alchemy; this process involves receiving a new endpoint to accept payments from agents across any supported protocol.

Addressing Protocol Fragmentation

The launch aims to tackle the fragmentation issue in the agentic payment landscape, where various competing protocols have emerged independently. Without a unified layer for interoperability, merchants would need to integrate each protocol separately as the ecosystem grows, leading to operational complexity and potential vendor lock-in.

By presenting AgentPay as a protocol-agnostic translation platform, Alchemy seeks to assume a role akin to payment orchestration tools in traditional payment systems. This approach helps reduce fragmentation for merchants while maintaining neutrality among different networks.

Alchemy is known for its developer tools and node services for blockchain applications and is popular within the Web3 development community. AgentPay now extends this infrastructure into the agentic commerce domain.

CTO Guillaume Poncin of Alchemy highlighted that without a unifying layer, protocol fragmentation will exacerbate as more payment systems enter the market. He articulated that AgentPay’s approach allows merchants to receive payments from any supported agent through a single endpoint.