AI agents no longer need a human at the checkout. At “Unsupervised,” a build day hosted by XDC Network at Hub71, Abu Dhabi’s global tech ecosystem, in partnership with the Middle East Stablecoin Association (MESA), AI agents paid real merchants for coffee and merchandise in USDC, then went on to buy services from one another. More than 200 attendees took part, and none of them reached for a card. By the end of the day, attendees’ agents had moved more than US$1,000, a significant figure given that each payment cost a fraction of a cent.
Hub71 opened its home in Abu Dhabi Global Market to developers, founders and hackers for the week, giving builders a place to test AI agent payments in the heart of the capital’s tech community. MESA, the region’s first industry body dedicated to stablecoins, brought the perspective of the banks, issuers and policymakers it works with to discuss agentic payments and the framework around them. Participants built their AI agents using Replit and linked them to XDC AI, XDC Network’s marketplace where agents can pay for goods and services. Each agent had its own digital wallet and paid in USDC, a digital dollar, with every payment recorded on XDC Network.
“AI agents can already search, compare and recommend better than most people. The one thing they still couldn’t do was pay. This week, we closed that gap. Agents bought coffee, picked up merchandise and paid each other for services in real money, without anyone reaching for a card. Agentic payments are no longer a future idea. They are happening at the coffee counter today, and XDC Network is building the infrastructure that lets them scale,” says Jeremy Noori, Head of Structured Products, XDC Network.
On arrival, each attendee scanned a QR code, set up an XDC AI wallet and received USDC credits to spend. XDC Network covered all transaction fees, so agents could pay without holding any other tokens.
The opening panel, “Agents that pay,” featured Beny Mohammadkhani, Head of AI Transformation, XDC Network, and Jeremy Noori, Head of Structured Products, XDC Network, alongside Dr. Bhaskar Dasgupta, Chairman and Founder of the Middle East Stablecoin Association (MESA), and Ramy Soliman, Co-chair, Middle East Stablecoin Association. The discussion focused on how AI agents can make and receive payments on their own. Panelists explored the role of digital dollars in settling those payments, and how banks and regulators can provide oversight without slowing them down. The setting suited the theme. Hub71 is based in Abu Dhabi Global Market, a financial centre known for its clear digital asset regulation.
Participants included developers, hackers and independent builders, and the use cases they explored went well beyond retail. These included agent-driven trade finance workflows, healthcare services monetised on a pay-per-use basis, and games in which agents pay to unlock in-game assets or subscriptions.
XDC AI lets AI agents discover and pay for APIs using USDC, and lets any API owner get paid per call with no code changes.
