The AI Agent Payment Wars Have Begun — Here's What Actually Matters (opens in new tab)

Visa announced this week that AI agents can now use credit cards. Mastercard launched a protocol for AI-to-AI payments and micropayments. Catena Labs raised $30M and filed for a national trust bank charter to build an "AI-native bank." The agent payment wars are officially live. But if you look past the headlines, the real story isn't about competition between payment networks. It's about a structural mismatch between legacy financial infrastructure and autonomous systems — and what it actual...