- Jan Curn of Apify argued that agent payment standards compete with API keys, which people already use to pay for agent services.
- He sees the convenience of a stored credential as the first friction point, and he named what might change that, such as more trust in models.
Jan Curn, founder of Apify, says new agent payment standards see almost no use, and he points first to API keys. He spoke on the AI Engineer show, in an episode published on October 18, 2026. He argued that the standards are not fighting the card networks. They are fighting the API key, a secret code that a person pastes into an agent so it can use a service. In his view, that is already the easy way to pay.
What was said
Curn said many big payments firms now back an agent payment standard. Some of them, including Stripe's MPP, run on crypto. He pointed to websites that track these payments on the blockchain. Over the last 30 days, he said, the volume was tiny. In his words: "I mean, that's basically nothing. It's like non-existent."
He first asked whether too few services exist to buy. He did not think so. The payment directories list plenty, and his own company is in them. Together with other listed services, he said, they earn far more than a million dollars a month from agents. But that money comes through API keys, not through agents finding and paying on their own.
So he looked at demand, as a funnel: need, setup, discovery, purchase. He said friction appears at every step. At the first step, most builders open an account in advance, put the key into the agent, and pay by credit card. Curn said: "They are competing with API keys because it's just the more convenient way."
He listed what could change this. Models may earn more trust with money, starting small. Always-on personal agents may be given budgets. And cheap, subsidised tokens may end, which would make buying a service cheaper than building one. These were his expectations, not findings.
Why it matters
Our reading: anyone selling services to agents should treat a signed-up account and a card on file as the product to beat. A new protocol must offer something that setup does not. Buyers should note who sits at the centre of today's model. A person creates the account, picks the services and receives the bill. That makes spending easy to trace and cap. Agents paying on their own would move that control elsewhere.
The other side
Curn runs a company that sells through API keys, so his view comes from that business. The excerpts also cover only the first steps of the funnel. We did not hear his full account of setup, discovery and purchase, so API keys may not be the whole story. The volume figures come from sites that watch blockchain payments, so they say nothing about payments made other ways. Curn also said parts of the unlock are "already happening". Whether the volume follows is still an open question.
Written by the WebPulse Newsroom with AI assistance, and checked by our editorial review: every quotation was verified against the recording's transcript. How we use AI.
The conversation this talking point comes from
- AI Engineer: Why AI Agents Still Won't Pay for Anything — Jan Curn, Apify (2026-10-18)
