Rain Launches Agentic Payments Alliance: 26 Industry Giants Unite to Shape the Future of AI-Driven Commerce
In a major move for the intersection of artificial intelligence, payments, and blockchain, Rain has officially launched the Agentic Payments Alliance (APA).
The new coalition brings together 26 founding members spanning traditional finance, stablecoins, blockchain networks, and fintech. High-profile names include Visa, Mastercard, Circle, Solana, Uniswap Labs, Fiserv, Fireblocks, Chainalysis, Avalanche, Remitly, and many others.
What Is Agentic Commerce?
Agentic commerce refers to a future where AI agents act autonomously on behalf of users — booking travel, managing subscriptions, paying vendors, shopping, or handling routine financial tasks without constant human approval.
According to McKinsey projections, the global agentic commerce market could reach $3 trillion to $5 trillion by 2030. Yet critical infrastructure questions remain unanswered:
- How do we securely authorize an AI agent to spend money?
- How do we prevent fraud when machines transact?
- How should agent identity be verified?
- How do loyalty points and rewards travel with an agent?
- What regulatory frameworks are needed?
The Agentic Payments Alliance was formed to answer these questions collaboratively — before fragmented, siloed solutions become the norm.
A Collective Effort, Not a Single-Company Play
Unlike typical industry groups dominated by one player, the APA is designed as a working coalition governed by its founding members. Members will jointly set the charter, conduct shared research, test emerging standards for agent identity and authorization, and engage with regulators.
Rain, the enterprise-grade infrastructure provider for stablecoin-powered payments, initiated the alliance after spending the past year building foundational tools such as its Agent Control Layer and Scoped Cards. These products give AI agents limited, widely accepted payment credentials that are safe and tightly controlled.
Farooq Malik, Co-Founder and CEO of Rain, stated:
“No single company should get to decide how agents transact on someone’s behalf. That has to come from the platforms building the rails, the regulators setting the rules, and the innovators closest to how agents are actually being used today. We initiated the Agentic Payments Alliance to put all of these parties in the same room, and to do it now, while the category is still taking shape.”
Full List of Founding Members
Avalanche, Basis Theory, Chainalysis, Circle, Coinflow, Crossmint, delta Network, Episode Six, Evertec, Fireblocks, Fiserv, Kala, Lithic, Mastercard, Monad, PayOS, Rain, Remitly, Rialo by Subzero Labs, Sardine, Shift4, Solana, Turnkey, Uniswap Labs, Visa, and Yuno.
Founding members will also receive early access to Rain’s Agentic Startup Program, an accelerator supporting early-stage companies building in the agentic commerce space.
Why This Matters
This alliance signals that major players in both traditional payments and crypto are taking the rise of autonomous AI agents seriously. By bringing card networks, stablecoin issuers, blockchain ecosystems, and security firms together early, the industry has a chance to create open, interoperable standards rather than competing proprietary systems.
As AI agents move from research tools to active economic participants, the rails they use to move money will become critical infrastructure. The Agentic Payments Alliance aims to help shape those rails responsibly.
The conversation around agentic payments has officially begun — and it’s happening with some of the biggest names in the industry at the table.
Sources: Rain official announcement, PR Newswire, American Banker, PYMNTS, and related industry coverage (August 18, 2026).
Note: This article was researched and re-polished using Grok.