MoonPay debuts Paybox to let AI agents complete purchases
The payments firm says Paybox lets Claude and ChatGPT users fund a wallet and authorize AI agents to buy goods and services.
By Hana Yoshida · Markets Reporter
3 min read
MoonPay launched Paybox on Thursday, a wallet meant to let AI agents complete purchases for consumers after they compare options or find prices. The company says the tool is aimed at non-technical users of Claude and ChatGPT who want an agent to handle transactions such as travel bookings, restaurant reservations and online shopping.
Neeraj Prasad, chief engineer of MoonPay Labs, told Fortune that current consumer AI agents can help users research products and prices but often stop short of actually paying. MoonPay said Paybox is designed to provide that missing payment step without requiring users to write code or install a separate program.
For Claude users, MoonPay said Paybox can be added through the Connectors menu in the agent’s settings. After adding the wallet, users can fund it from a bank account or with cryptocurrency, according to the company.
The setup gives an AI agent access to money that can be used when a user gives purchase instructions in plain English. MoonPay said purchases depend on whether a merchant can interact with agents.
MoonPay gave several examples of what Paybox can do. A user could have an agent pay Resy to hold a restaurant reservation, or book flights through Brij, which MoonPay described as an agent-friendly service. The company also said the wallet can be used for shopping on Amazon.
MoonPay said Paybox includes controls meant to limit what an agent can do with the wallet. Users can set spending caps, such as allowing only purchases below $100, or require an alert before any purchase goes through.
Open rails for agent payments
Paybox enters a small but growing corner of online commerce in which AI agents act on purchase instructions. Fortune reported that agentic commerce is expanding quickly but still makes up only a small share of total online buying.
MoonPay is not the only company building payment tools for AI agents. Fortune reported that Robinhood and Coinbase already offer products that let users provide agents with shopping funds, while Visa is also developing AI commerce tools.
MoonPay says Paybox differs because it is decentralized and does not rely on the company approving each transaction. The wallet uses x402, an open protocol, which MoonPay says allows anyone to use it and avoids steering transactions toward favored merchants.
Adoption may be a hurdle. Fortune reported that MoonPay is best known as a back-end payments company, while Robinhood, Visa and other consumer-facing brands can build from larger existing customer bases.
Questions also remain around how Paybox would handle mistaken or fraudulent purchases, Fortune reported. Those issues are not unique to MoonPay and are a broader concern for companies developing agent-based commerce.
Prasad told Fortune by email that Paybox can gain traction because it is built on open payment rails rather than inside a closed company system. “The giants are building agentic payments inside their own walls; we’re the opposite bet: your own money, on open rails, reaching everything the walled versions can’t, from a dinner reservation to a DeFi protocol,” he said. “Nobody signed up for Venmo because of ACH. People won’t come to Paybox for the wallet; they’ll come because their AI can finally finish the job.”
This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.