Franklin Templeton Sees Agentic AI as Blockchain’s Next Killer App

Agentic AI marks a shift from conversational assistants to autonomous software that can plan tasks, call services and transact with limited human oversight. That creates demand for machine-to-machine payments for compute, APIs and data. The economics matter: Franklin Templeton said a typical card payment costs 2% to 3% plus about $0.30, while an AI-agent purchase can average just $0.001, making conventional card rails impractical for high-frequency micropayments and opening a role for low-cost blockchain settlement.

Franklin Templeton Head of Digital Assets and Innovation Sandy Kaul said on July 21, 2026, that agentic AI could become blockchain’s next “killer” use case. She cited Aptos, Solana and BNB Chain as networks that settle within seconds, compared with Visa’s one-to-three-business-day settlement cycle. A Visa-Artemis report published July 14 said Coinbase-incubated x402 had processed about $15 million across 109.6 million adjusted transactions since its May 2025 launch, offering early evidence of demand for machine-native payment rails.