Startup drops first universal AI agent payment plug into Asia’s $28.9 trillion ecommerce market

Many experts share Bilotta’s AI agent outlook, including Charles Hoskinson, founder and CEO of Cardano’s Input Output, who said that by 2035 they will become more relevant than humans.

The macro numbers support his stance. Data from the U.S. International Trade Administration via Trade.gov shows that business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce across the broader 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.

Yet, despite that explosive growth, the plumbing underneath remains broken. The problem is fundamentally an issue of legacy infrastructure and compliance, Bilotta noted.

Global financial regulations, banking protocols and identity verification checks were built strictly for humans. An autonomous AI software agent cannot pass a standard compliance check, he said or execute a payment loop unless a human manually intervenes to clear the transaction.

To bridge this structural gap, the industry requires a compliant backend middleware that acts as a universal interpreter. Bilotta explained that by dropping an Anthropic-standard Model Context Protocol (MCP) server directly into the payment infrastructure, software agents can programmatically navigate compliance, pull real-time FX quotes, and settle transactions natively across borders without human steps.

While institutional gatekeepers like Stripe and Mastercard have spent billions acquiring fiat-to-crypto APIs to secure traditional corporate treasuries, the automated machine-to-machine economy across emerging corridors remains heavily underserved.