Exclusive Interview with FinAI: Order Pathfinders in the Agent Economy Era

Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author | Azuma (@azuma_eth)

The narrative of AI development is rapidly shifting from “tool-based intelligence” to “autonomous intelligence.” Two years ago, we marveled at the fluent responses of LLMs like ChatGPT. Today, intelligent agents represented by “Lobster” OpenClaw can independently perform more complex real-world tasks to some extent.

The outline of the future world is gradually becoming clear — AI’s role in economic activities will shift from “human assistant” to “autonomous participant.” In the near future, it will be commonplace to see scenarios such as: assistant-like agents helping you book flights and meals; research agents proactively seeking opportunities in financial markets; commercial agents automatically comparing global supplier quotes and placing orders… and their counterparts will also be other agents.

But as AI agents gradually acquire economic capabilities, a new question arises — how should the economic order among AI agents be established?

“AI can already perform tasks, but it lacks payment ability, an identity system, and a credit system. Without these infrastructures, autonomous AI economics will be difficult to operate effectively.”

This statement comes from Odaily Planet Daily’s recent contact with an AI startup, FinAI. The core team mainly hails from leading internet giants and is actively embracing Web3 stacks like x402 and ERC-8004, attempting to address the above “order” issue through three dimensions: payments, identity, and reputation.

FinAI founder Rechard revealed that the company is currently in seed funding stage, with commitments from some top blockchain investors in the industry.

Pioneering the Order in the Agent Economy Era

In a nutshell, FinAI aims to — build a set of financial infrastructure tailored for AI agents, providing the foundational order for the future agent-to-agent economy.

FinAI envisions that the AI agent economy requires three core capabilities: payment ability, identity system, and credit system.

• First is payment ability. Currently, most AI agents lack independent payment capabilities; they can perform tasks but cannot complete real transactions. For example, an AI agent can help a user search for flights, but the final payment still requires manual completion. FinAI hopes to realize microsecond-level payments between agents based on the x402 protocol, enabling service calls among agents to form a complete economic closed loop.
• Second is the identity system. FinAI introduces the ERC-8004 protocol and proposes the concept of KYA (Know Your Agent), which is designed to establish a verifiable identity system for AI agents. Unlike traditional KYC in finance, KYA focuses on identity verification and behavioral boundaries, enabling AI agents to have compliant and secure identity attributes when executing tasks.
• Third is the credit system. FinAI believes that large-scale future transactions among agents will inevitably rely on a reputation system. Information such as transaction history, task execution quality, and refund records can serve as important basis for credit evaluation. This credit system will become the trust foundation for future AI economic activities.

Rechard added that FinAI hopes to bundle these three core capabilities and open them via APIs/Skills, allowing agents to freely invoke them, thereby enabling each agent to easily access payment, identity, and credit functions, and gradually foster an agent transaction market.

Regarding target customers and revenue models, Rechard revealed that FinAI mainly targets two groups. One is Web2 agent application developers, who will subscribe via API to access FinAI’s services — this will be the primary revenue source. The other is on-chain users within the Web3 ecosystem. FinAI is exploring various financial application scenarios with mainstream public chains, providing services through agent skills. In the future, FinAI may charge a small transaction fee in agent-to-agent task exchanges, but Rechard mentioned that the goal is to incubate a mature agent trading market where agents can independently earn profits, not relying on C-end revenue. Therefore, transaction commissions are expected to be very low and user-friendly.

By 2026, FinAI has completed its first autonomous payment order and expects to generate formal service revenue within the first quarter. Rechard stated, “What FinAI is doing isn’t a money-burning business, so we expect to turn profitable within the year.”

Embracing Web3 Is the Trend

FinAI actively adopts protocols and standards born in the Web3 world, such as x402 and ERC-8004, and plans to integrate the latest ERC-8138 protocol recently launched by the Ethereum Foundation as a complement to its services. Rechard sees this as more than just a technical choice — it’s driven by real market needs.

Readers familiar with “Lobster” may have noticed recent security concerns, such as data deletion errors or mistaken emails. If AI agents can immediately access your financial accounts, risks will become even harder to control — which is why many companies are hesitant to directly open credit cards or bank accounts to agents.

Rechard explained that agents need a new payment and identity system, rather than directly inheriting human financial accounts. Stablecoin-based payments and settlement systems on-chain are currently the best options.

Cost and efficiency are the most critical factors. Traditional cross-border payment systems usually take T+3 to T+5 days, are costly, and involve complex processes, making them incompatible with micro-payments needed in the agent economy. Stablecoin-based payment and settlement systems can complete transactions within seconds and significantly reduce costs. FinAI revealed that its system can currently handle real-time payments ranging from $0.01 to $1,000, settling within 2-3 seconds, with on-chain settlement costs about 1/300 of traditional systems.

Rechard pointed out that the share of stablecoins in global payments is continuously rising. Once funds move from traditional banking systems into stablecoins, they rarely flow back. This trend is pushing traditional institutions to actively embrace on-chain finance.

However, Rechard also noted that traditional market clients still have concerns about compliance and security when engaging with on-chain financial systems. This is where FinAI’s advantages come in. The company possesses full-stack technical and engineering capabilities, including identity gateways, payment systems, quantum-encrypted wallets, and related patents, enabling it to build a digital banking-level secure environment for agent economic activities. Additionally, with its KYA-based identity and credit system, FinAI can further ensure compliance and security in transaction architecture.

First-Mover Advantage Means Everything

FinAI’s initial concept dates back to August 2025. Despite the short development time, progress has been highly efficient: preliminary launch in November 2025; integration with Base chain in January 2026; MCP for agents in February; DID and reputation system PoC in March…

Rechard mentioned that in the early stage of the agent economy, the biggest competitive advantage lies in who can run a complete system first. While some point solutions exist—focusing on payments, identity, or reputation—there are few infrastructures that integrate all three.

Once the agent economy accelerates, and AI agents need payment, identity, or credit systems, the platform that completes the full closed loop first will be the primary service called upon.

Rechard also shared a key insight — to provide more agent-friendly services. Specifically, future service selection will be driven by agents, whose behavior differs from humans: they automatically seek the most cost-effective and easiest-to-access services. Therefore, FinAI emphasizes “agent-friendly” design, optimizing code interfaces and APIs for easier agent integration and invocation.

Historically, each paradigm shift in the market has required new infrastructure and order. E-commerce led to third-party payments, mobile internet to digital wallets, and the rise of AI agents may give rise to a new economic system. FinAI aims to be a pioneer in exploring and leading the construction of this new order.