Who Banks the Agent Economy? Three Takeaways from Token 2049 Singapore

We brought more than 300 people together at the Estonian Business Hub for Banking the Agent Economy, co-hosted with the Estonian Embassy in Singapore and Yellow Card.

Banks, founders, payment companies and investors joined us to explore a question: what financial services will AI agents need, and who will build them?

The agenda followed that question through three conversations: how agents will transact, how stablecoins connect to the global payment system, and where investors see businesses worth backing.

For us, bringing these groups into the same room was the point. A payment company, a bank and an AI founder may approach the problem differently. A working product needs them to understand one another.

Here are three takeaways we are carrying forward.

1. Giving an agent a wallet is a starting point

Our opening panel brought together OpenFX, HSBC and AEON, moderated by Yash Yadav, to discuss how AI agents will pay, exchange and transact.

An agent with access to money still needs rules. What can it spend? Which actions require approval? Who is accountable when it makes a mistake?

The reflections shared after the event highlighted how early agentic payments remain. Developers and AI startups are testing use cases, while questions around trust, liability and risk pricing remain unresolved.

For a team building a product today, those questions become design decisions:

• Define which actions the agent can request.
• Set limits on the amounts, assets and destinations involved.
• Decide when a person must approve.
• Keep a record of what was requested, authorised and executed.

Buying a service within a fixed budget and reallocating a company's treasury involve different responsibilities. The permissions should reflect that.

Our view: adoption will depend on whether customers can understand and control what they are delegating.

2. A borderless payment still has a local destination

The second panel brought together Yellow Card, Tether, Stripe and Aspire, moderated by Chiara Munaretto, to discuss stablecoins, wallets and borderless payments.

One takeaway was practical: the customer experiences the whole journey.

A business paying a supplier abroad needs to fund the payment, convert currencies and get money to a place where the recipient can use it. Settlement is one step. Local access, liquidity, cost and reliability determine whether the service solves the problem.

That is why these conversations benefit from bringing different providers together. Global infrastructure and local payment access have to connect.

For builders, the test is straightforward: can the customer get from the money they have to the payment they need to make?

3. Volume is only part of the business

The investment fireside chat brought together Felix Frenzel, Jerome Ong and Lionel Pek, moderated by Melvin Seah.

A takeaway shared afterwards was the distinction between payment activity and the economics behind it. Transaction volume shows usage. Net revenue and gross margin reveal more about what the company earns from serving it.

That leads to a product question: what does the customer need after the payment?

A business receiving stablecoins may need to manage its operating balances. A wallet customer may want to earn on savings or borrow against assets they already hold. A treasury team may need to compare markets, allocate funds and monitor positions.

Yield, credit and cards can deepen that relationship. The case for each starts with the customer problem and the economics of solving it.

For us, that was one of the most useful connections between the sessions. Payments bring money into a product. What customers can do next helps determine why they stay.

Where Compass fits

These conversations map closely to the work we do at Compass.

We help platforms connect to onchain markets through one API, supporting yield, loans and trading, with tokenized asset access being developed alongside issuer partners.

For example, a fintech can start by letting customers earn on stablecoin balances, then add another market or a borrowing flow through the same integration. Compass builds the transactions and supplies the data. The customer's wallet or the platform's custodian signs.

That separation matters for agents too. An agent can request an action while the app defines the permitted scope and the user retains approval and signing.

The opportunity we see is helping teams connect these capabilities into products their customers can use, with clear control over the money.

Beyond the sessions

Some of what we will remember most happened between panels: meeting partners in person, reconnecting with people across the industry and continuing conversations over closing drinks.

Thank you to our co-hosts, the Estonian Embassy in Singapore and Yellow Card.

To our strategic partners: OpenFX, AEON Protocol and Aspire.

To our supporting partners: Kleros, Kadan Capital, Maximum Frequency Ventures, The Spartan Group, HSBC and Stablecoin Insider.

And to every speaker, moderator and attendee who joined us: thank you for bringing your experience and perspective.