Why aren't wallets enough for agent payments?

A wallet only signs. Production agent payments need a policy layer in front (budgets, allowlists, signer isolation) and an operations layer behind (receipts, settlement, audit, failure handling). Half the stack lives below the signature.

What fields should an agent-payment receipt have?

Minimum: request_id, amount, asset, chain, recipient, signer address, timestamp, status (pending/confirmed/voided/refunded), and settlement_ref (tx hash, channel state hash, or facilitator ID). Receipts must be addressable via GET /receipts/ and retained for years.

When should I use channel settlement instead of per-request settlement?

Channel settlement (AMP-style) wins when individual customers hit your endpoint hundreds or thousands of times per session. For 1,000 calls, per-request settlement needs ~1,000 on-chain transactions; channels need about three. The trade-off is more state to operate: dispute windows, watchtowers, force-close timeouts.

What audit surface do agent-payment APIs need?

One boring endpoint: GET /usage?address=...&from=...&to=... returning paginated receipts in a stable, versioned schema, accessible to the signing address itself. The customer's compliance team will eventually ask for it. Build it now; CSV export comes later if requested.

AI Payments

After the Signature: Receipts, Settlement, and Audit for AI Agent Payments

May 8, 2026

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9 min read

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Aggelos Kappos(Founder @ QBT Labs)

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Updated July 19, 2026

AI Agent PaymentsReceiptsSettlementAudit Logsx402AMPPayment InfrastructureStablecoin Micropayments

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