Payments

Agentic Commerce & Payments

AI agents are becoming economic actors. They need to pay for compute, purchase data, settle invoices, and transact across chains — all without human approval for every request. Tenzro provides the identity, wallet, and payment infrastructure that makes autonomous agent commerce possible.

The Problem

Traditional payment infrastructure requires human authorization for every transaction. Credit cards need CVV entry, bank transfers need approval workflows, and API keys are static secrets that cannot enforce spending limits or scope restrictions. None of this works when AI agents need to make hundreds of autonomous payment decisions per hour.

The emerging agentic economy faces several infrastructure gaps:

■No standardized way for agents to hold funds, pay for services, or receive payments
■Per-token AI inference billing requires micropayments that are too expensive on traditional rails
■Cross-border agent transactions face currency conversion, compliance, and latency issues
■No audit trail linking autonomous agent spending back to human controllers
■Agent keys stored in plaintext memory are vulnerable to extraction attacks

How Tenzro Solves It

Tenzro provides end-to-end payment infrastructure purpose-built for autonomous agents. Every agent gets a verifiable on-chain identity, a self-sovereign MPC wallet, and access to multiple payment protocols — all with hardware-secured key management and configurable delegation scopes.

MPC Agent Wallets

Every agent receives a threshold MPC wallet (2-of-3) auto-provisioned at registration. No seed phrases. Keys are generated inside TEE enclaves and protected with AES-256-GCM encryption. Supports TNZO, USDC, USDT, ETH, SOL, and BTC.

Delegation Scopes

Human controllers define exactly what agents can spend: max_transaction_value, max_daily_spend, allowed operations, approved contracts, time bounds, and permitted payment protocols. Enforced on-chain via TDIP.

Multi-Protocol Payments

Native support for MPP (Machine Payments Protocol by Stripe/Tempo), x402 (Coinbase HTTP 402), and AP2 (Visa/Mastercard agent protocols). The PaymentGateway routes to the right protocol automatically based on the merchant's requirements.

Micropayment Channels

Off-chain micropayment channels enable per-token AI inference billing without on-chain transaction costs for every API call. Channels are opened, updated, and closed with dispute resolution and batch settlement.

Architecture

An agent requesting AI inference triggers the full payment lifecycle: identity verification, delegation scope check, payment challenge, credential exchange, and on-chain settlement.

Code Example

Rust SDK

use tenzro_sdk::TenzroClient;

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() -> anyhow::Result<()> {
    let client = TenzroClient::new("https://rpc.tenzro.network");

    // Register agent identity with delegation scope
    let identity = client.register_identity(
        "machine",
        "research-agent",
        Some("did:tenzro:human:controller-uuid"),
    ).await?;

    // Create MPC wallet for the agent
    let wallet = client.create_wallet("ed25519").await?;

    // Set delegation scope: max 100 TNZO/tx, 1000 TNZO/day
    client.set_delegation_scope(&identity.did, json!({
        "max_transaction_value": "100000000000000000000",
        "max_daily_spend": "1000000000000000000000",
        "allowed_operations": ["inference", "transfer"],
        "allowed_payment_protocols": ["mpp", "x402"],
    })).await?;

    // Pay for AI inference via MPP
    let challenge = client.create_payment_challenge(
        "mpp",
        "50000000000000000", // 0.05 TNZO
        &wallet.address,
    ).await?;

    let receipt = client.pay_mpp(
        &challenge.session_id,
        &wallet.address,
    ).await?;

    // Request inference after payment
    let response = client.chat_completion(
        "gemma3:27b",
        vec![json!({"role": "user", "content": "Analyze Q4 revenue"})],
    ).await?;

    Ok(())
}

Relevant Tools & APIs

MCP Tools

create_wallet

send_transaction

get_balance

create_payment_challenge

verify_payment

list_payment_protocols

register_identity

set_delegation_scope

RPC Methods

tenzro_createPaymentChallenge

tenzro_payMpp

tenzro_payX402

tenzro_listPaymentSessions

tenzro_settle

eth_sendRawTransaction

CLI Commands

tenzro-cli payment challenge

tenzro-cli payment pay

tenzro-cli wallet create

tenzro-cli wallet send

tenzro-cli escrow open-channel

tenzro-cli identity register