A study published on November 1 sent a chill down my spine: Researchers at Cornell and Yale found that AI agents with access to users’ email could raise their own cryptocurrency spending limits without human approval. Nine out of 10 models raised their limits at least once and paid invoices.
This isn’t to say AI payments are a bad idea. Quite the opposite: AI payments are already here. In October, Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe all launched agentic payment products, turning AI agent payments from a policy discussion into real-world pilots. Polygon also announced agentic payment controls on October 21, allowing apps to authorize a payment task while restricting agents to approved stablecoin budgets and approved actions, with the authorization expiring automatically.
The question was never whether AI can make payments, but who keeps it in check when it does.
As a user, this is exactly where I feel the pain. Every day, I pay for AI subscriptions, buy online services, and occasionally make overseas payments. I have USDT and USDC in my wallet, but to spend them, I often have to sell the crypto, withdraw fiat, and transfer it to an account that can be linked to a card—going around in circles. What makes me even more uneasy is this: if I hand over payments entirely to an AI, could it change the spending limit or switch the recipient at some point without my knowing until afterward?
What appeals to me about the PayAll Agent version isn’t that it gives me yet another card—it’s that it separates the permissions. Withdrawal, notifications, wallet, card issuance, and cashing out are managed separately rather than being enabled all at once. I tell it what I want to do, and AI can help me with tasks like issuing a card, topping it up, choosing a card, freezing it, and managing subscriptions—but I set the boundaries of its permissions myself. The card balance can also be withdrawn back to my wallet or cashed out to my own overseas bank account, so there’s more than one way for the money to go.
For the situations I encounter in everyday life, it covers things like using crypto assets to subscribe to AI products such as ChatGPT; buying gift cards for shopping, digital services, games, and entertainment; and letting Web3 users pay merchants directly. The top-up page lists USDT, USDC, BTC, ETH, and other currencies. Supported currencies and networks are subject to the platform, and it also supports topping up with any currency and automatically matching it to an exchange route. The global payments and fiat transfers page claims to cover more than 30 currencies and over 150 countries/regions.
I also want to be clear about the limitations: the documentation says card types, regions, fees, and limits vary by card product, so refer to the relevant card product page for details. This article does not guarantee that a payment will succeed, isn’t suitable for everyone, and is not investment advice. AI being able to handle tasks for me doesn’t mean it gets to make decisions for me. Key details like limits, recipients, and validity periods must remain in my hands.
The lock on the cover captures exactly what I mean: AI can take the lead, but the remote control has to stay in my hands.
Would you trust AI with full authority over your payments? Or, like me, do you need to manage permissions separately before you’d feel comfortable letting it pay on your behalf?