AI Micropayments Using Tokenized Deposits Pass Technical Tests

Global banking group HSBC and Ant Digital Technologies, a technology company specializing in blockchain infrastructure and digital financial solutions, announced the successful technical verification of automated micropayments for AI agents. During the tests, the companies demonstrated the full interaction cycle between an autonomous software agent and a digital service, from discovery and access to payment execution and final settlement.

The experiment relied on 3 core technologies:

• HSBC’s Tokenised Deposit Service (TDS), launched in May 2025;

• Anvita Flow, an AI agent interaction environment developed by Ant Digital Technologies;

• The testnet of Jovay, a layer-2 blockchain network.

The combined infrastructure integrated AI agent requests, micropayment execution, and banking controls into a single automated process. The tests specifically verified a sequence of operations involving:

• Automatic discovery of available digital services by an AI agent;

• Access to a selected service and use of its functionality;

• Initiation of a micropayment, typically less than $2 in such scenarios;

• Transaction verification using banking risk management mechanisms;

• Payment completion with real-time settlement through tokenized deposits.

HSBC handled settlement through TDS and conducted real-time risk checks via an MCP interface. Ant Digital Technologies’ Anvita Flow network managed service discovery, invocation, and settlement coordination, while Jovay served as the blockchain test environment for transaction processing.

The main outcome of the tests was the technical verification that AI agent decision-making, access to digital services, payment infrastructure, and financial controls could be integrated into a single automated process. This approach could potentially allow autonomous agents to pay for the digital resources they consume without requiring separate manual approval at each stage of the interaction.

Zhuoqun Bian, President of the Blockchain Business at Ant Digital Technologies, said the joint tests with HSBC demonstrated the potential for using AI agents in on-chain transactions. He added that the company would continue exploring practical applications of autonomous systems in commercial scenarios.

Lewis Sun, Global Head of Digital Currencies at HSBC, emphasized that the development of tokenized deposit services and new payment use cases was aimed at reducing operational barriers for customers while maintaining banking controls and risk management mechanisms.

For more information on agentic commerce, how its infrastructure works, and how M2M payments between AI agents operate, read CP Media’s dedicated articles.