Stables launches AI payment protocol for Asia's $28.9 trillion B2B trade
In brief
- Stables uses Anthropic's Model Context Protocol to enable autonomous cross-border payment settlement without human intervention
- Asia's B2B e-commerce expands 15% annually, projected to reach $28.9 trillion by end of 2026
- Global stablecoin volume hit $35 trillion last year; projections exceed $700 trillion by 2035
The infrastructure gap
Global stablecoins moved $35 trillion last year, with projections suggesting the corridor could exceed $700 trillion by 2035. Yet the pipes remain stuck in the human era. Legacy financial regulations, banking protocols and identity verification checks were built strictly for humans and cannot accommodate autonomous AI software agents without manual intervention.
This is the bottleneck Stables is targeting. The company proposes using an Anthropic-standard Model Context Protocol (MCP) server in payment infrastructure to allow software agents to programmatically navigate compliance, pull real-time FX quotes, and settle transactions across borders without human intervention.
Why Asia, why now
Business-to-business e-commerce across the Asia-Pacific region is expanding at a 15% annual clip, with market values projected to climb past $28.9 trillion by the end of this year. That's the addressable market. The friction is the problem.
Bernardo Bilotta, CEO and co-founder of Stables, argues that the actual growth vector in the region is no longer human-to-human retail volume. It's machines talking to machines. "Between now and the next five years, I think the entirety of commerce will be moving through AI agents," Bilotta said in a statement. "We're entering a world where money won't only move between people and businesses. It will increasingly move through software and AI systems acting on their behalf."
This framing aligns with broader industry sentiment. Charles Hoskinson, founder and CEO of Cardano's Input Output, stated that AI agents will become more relevant than humans by 2035.
Market signals
Recent trading data suggests the shift is already underway. In May, combined exchange volumes fell 3.45% to $4.41 trillion, the lowest since September 2024. Retail interest is cooling. But RWA perpetual futures volumes rose 10.4% in May, hitting a new all-time high, signaling institutional and programmatic capital moving into real-world asset settlement infrastructure. The infrastructure play, not the trading play, is where the momentum sits.
