MoonPay Launches PayBox for AI Agents to Spend Crypto with MPC Security

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MoonPay has launched PayBox, a crypto payment vault for AI agents to spend funds securely. The system uses multi-party computation (MPC) to split keys, preventing any single entity from signing transactions. PayBox supports Solana and seven Ethereum-compatible chains. It also integrates with x402, an open payment protocol backed by major card networks. The product aligns with MoonPay’s 2026 plan for agent-native payments. The AI + crypto news highlights a new security layer, as the design aims to avoid potential security breach risks.

Headline: MoonPay’s new PayBox lets Claude and ChatGPT agents hold and spend crypto—and keeps the keys out of their hands MoonPay today unveiled PayBox, a “payment vault” that plugs into AI assistants like Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s ChatGPT and lets autonomous AI agents actually complete purchases and move funds on your behalf—while keeping users in control. What PayBox does - Instead of just planning purchases (comparing flights, finding deals, drafting shopping lists), chatbots can now finalize transactions for you. You tell the agent what to buy, it prepares the payment flow, and you confirm with a passkey (think Face ID or a similar device-stored cryptographic key). Once approved, the payment executes. - Initial integrations cover restaurant reservations, flight bookings and shopping at major online retailers. PayBox also supports token swaps, cross-chain bridges, and routing funds into DeFi protocols such as Aave. Supported rails and protocols - Crypto: PayBox supports Solana plus seven Ethereum-compatible chains at launch (Ethereum, Hyperliquid, Tempo, Base, Robinhood Chain, Arbitrum, and Polygon). - Payments: It works with x402, an open agentic payment protocol that originated at Coinbase and was donated to the Linux Foundation; x402 is now backed by Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Shopify, AWS and Anthropic. That lets AI agents pay any service built to accept agent-initiated transactions. - Card flows: Card payments use Visa’s agentic commerce protocol so the AI never sees your full card number. Security and custody model - MoonPay says PayBox solves the tradeoff between convenience and control that has hindered prior products. Rather than handing custody to a single platform or agent, PayBox uses cryptographic safeguards so no single party can unilaterally move funds. - MoonPay relies on technology from Sodot, an Israeli key-management firm it acquired in April for roughly $100 million in an all-stock deal. Sodot’s systems already secure more than $50 billion in assets and over 10 million wallets for clients such as eToro and BitGo. - Keys are split with MPC (multi-party computation) and stored inside TEEs (trusted execution environments). Per MoonPay, “wallet keys are split via MPC across hardware-isolated enclaves, so no device, session, or party, not MoonPay, not the AI agent, ever holds a complete key or can sign alone.” - For card payments, the agent processes transactions without ever seeing the actual card number, reducing the risk of credential leakage. Why it matters - MoonPay CEO Ivan Soto-Wright framed PayBox as the next phase of payments: “The card hid the cash. The phone hid the card. This is the era where money disappears into conversation. Billions of AI agents are coming online, and every one of them will need to hold, move, and spend money safely.” - Until now, chatbots could recommend purchases but users had to leave the chat to complete them. PayBox aims to collapse that gap, letting conversational agents execute payments while retaining user approval and cryptographic safeguards. Product roadmap and context - PayBox is the latest step in MoonPay’s 2026 push toward agent-native payments. In March the company published an open wallet standard for AI agents backed by PayPal, the Ethereum Foundation and the Solana Foundation. In May it added a way to buy crypto inside ChatGPT (which still redirected to a checkout page), and in June it shipped a desktop app connecting Claude and Codex to crypto wallets. - The PayBox infrastructure leverages Sodot’s key-management stack, acquired in April. Disclosure - MoonPay Ventures is an investor in Dastan, the parent company of Decrypt. Bottom line: PayBox is an ambitious attempt to make agent-initiated commerce frictionless while avoiding centralized custody. If adoption and security live up to the claims, it could accelerate how AI assistants handle real-world transactions—and raise fresh questions about UX, permission models, and regulatory oversight as money starts “disappearing into conversation.”

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