HSBC and Ant Digital test an AI agent that finds a digital service and pays for it with a micropayment
IA en un minuto newsroom · Editor: Jon Elgezabal
In 30 seconds
HSBC and Ant Digital Technologies reported on October 9 a trial in which an AI program located a digital service, used it and covered its cost in a single automated sequence. The charge was a micropayment, a category the release often places under 2 dollars, drawn from tokenized bank deposits and closed instantly. The two companies stress this is a technical exploration, not something on sale.
HSBC and Ant Digital Technologies announced on Friday, October 9, from Hong Kong, that they have completed a technical test in which an AI agent (a program that acts on behalf of a user) finds a digital service, uses it and pays for it, all within one automated process.
The payment was a micropayment, which the release says is often defined as less than 2 dollars, and it was settled in real time. It was made with tokenized deposits, that is, money from a bank account represented on a blockchain.
Each side contributed one piece. HSBC provided its Tokenised Deposit Service and the settlement, with real-time risk checks through its MCP interface. Ant Digital provided Anvita Flow, the network that lets AI agents discover services, invoke them and manage the settlement of the micropayment, and Jovay Testnet, the layer-2 blockchain test environment where the transactions ran.
It is not a product. Both companies state that the test was carried out solely to explore the technology and that it does not represent a commercial launch or a live offering for customers. The release gives no dates and announces no service.
Lewis Sun, Global Head of Digital Currencies at HSBC, describes it as "a step forward in the exploration of how AI agents could use micropayments to access a broader range of services". Zhuoqun Bian, President of Blockchain Business at Ant Digital Technologies, says the test "demonstrates the potential use of on-chain AI agents" and that the company will keep bringing AI into real-world business scenarios.
According to the release, what has been validated is the infrastructure needed to connect AI-driven decisions, access to the service, the payment and the financial controls of a bank within one automated process.
HSBC is not the only bank testing payments initiated by AI agents. As Cointelegraph recalls, in March Santander completed an AI-agent-initiated payment using the Agent Pay infrastructure from Mastercard, in a controlled test involving the live payment systems of the bank. In May, the Swiss digital asset bank Sygnum tested AI-agent-driven transactions on a blockchain mainnet, with customers required to approve and sign each one. CaixaBank also completed an AI-agent-initiated card transaction using Visa Intelligent Commerce and existing merchant payment systems.
Why it matters · analysis and opinion
A program buying things by itself runs today into something very simple: it has no way to pay tiny amounts without a person behind it. The HSBC and Ant Digital test aims at that gap, and the interesting part is who signs it: a regulated bank that places its risk checks inside the same flow, rather than leaving that money to systems outside banking. Almost everything is still missing for real use. It ran in a test environment, with no customers, and the release does not say who is liable if the agent pays for something its owner did not want, what limits would apply or how much each transaction would cost. Nor is it an isolated case: Santander, CaixaBank and Sygnum have run similar trials on other infrastructure. For anyone selling digital services, the sensible move for now is to watch closely and change nothing yet.
Source: Ant Digital Technologies and HSBC (PR Newswire) · Written with the help of AI: how we make the news
