A decade ago, moving money across borders often meant delays measured in days and layers of intermediaries. Today, the same transaction can be completed in seconds, with funds transferred instantly across currencies and jurisdictions.
That transformation is unfolding differently from what early crypto advocates envisioned. Rather than driving widespread use of digital assets at checkout, adoption is taking place at the infrastructure level. At the Consensus conference in Miami, industry participants said blockchain is quietly reshaping how money moves without changing how consumers pay, and enabling new forms of AI-driven transactions.
Payments move into software layers
One of the shifts is happening at the application level, where payments are starting to disappear as a separate step and becoming embedded directly into software.
Instead of users actively initiating transactions, new standards such as Coinbase's X402 allow payments to be triggered automatically when a service is accessed, turning them into part of the underlying logic of an application.
"It's really just an extension of the HTTP specification… a way to fulfil that payment in a technology-native way that supports crypto but also can support cards and pretty much any other payment method," said Jesse Pollak, creator of the layer-2 network Base. When an AI agent or user makes an x402 payment, it is settled on a blockchain specified by the server, including networks such as Base, Polygon, Arbitrum, Ethereum and Solana.
That changes how digital services are priced and used. Rather than subscriptions or upfront fees, services can charge per action – whether that's accessing data, running a query or executing a task – with payments settled instantly in the background.
The shift is being driven by the emergence of AI agents that can act on behalf of users, deciding when to access paid services and completing transactions directly, creating early forms of machine-to-machine commerce.
"You're starting to see agents be able to do new things with money," Pollak said. "We’re definitely seeing some inter-agent commerce… agents who have specialties kind of selling their services," he added.
Legacy networks push into payments
Another shift in payments is being driven by legacy players repositioning themselves within the payments stack.
MoneyGram, which has more than 80 years of experience in cross-border money transfers, is now enabling crypto withdrawals in over 100 countries through its network of brick-and-mortar locations, effectively linking digital asset platforms with local cash distribution. The move, announced during the Miami conference, positions the company at the intersection of crypto and traditional finance, giving users a direct way to access liquidity from their digital holdings.
"Our core business in the past has been in remittance. But if you think about our asset, which is our global network, it's a payments network," Anthony Soohoo, chairman and CEO of MoneyGram, told Sandmark during an interview on the sidelines of the Consensus conference. The company is also building products that allow users to hold balances, convert currencies on demand and access funds across different markets.
Capital shifts to payments infrastructure
That approach places MoneyGram closer to the money flow. For investors and companies, the shift in payments is also impacting where capital is being deployed – away from assets and toward the systems that allow money to move at scale.
"There's a lot of payment infrastructure being developed right now… so institutions can participate in a meaningful way," Max Khan, CEO of Digital Wealth Partners, told Sandmark.
Khan said the opportunity lies not only in new forms of money, but in the rails that support them, as blockchain draws increasing interest from wealth investors as a new layer of financial infrastructure. He pointed to the limitations of legacy networks such as SWIFT, which can still take days to process international transactions, contrasting them with blockchain-based systems that enable near-instant settlement and accelerate the movement of capital through the economy.
"Increasing the velocity of money is good for the economy. As a capitalist society, we're very likely to adopt a technology that increases the velocity of money and contributes to economic growth. And that technology is blockchain."
According to data from Statista, global payments transaction value worldwide is projected to reach $36.09tn by 2030. Consulting firm McKinsey & Company said in a 2025 report that the movement of money is now as important as its volume, adding that "the design choices being made today are shaping the next decade of payments and will determine who leads, who follows, and who falls behind."
