Agent-Pay Autonomous Cross-Border Payments

This project was born from direct, costly experience. My 2023 fintech startup processed over £2 million in remittances in a month, and our primary bottleneck for scaling wasn't our technology; it was the 1-3 day settlement delays and partner dependencies. Global B2B payments are a £17 trillion market defined by profound inefficiency. The £17 trillion 'Hurry Up & Wait' problem isn't just a statistic for us; it's a multi-million-pound barrier we've personally hit. Our solution, "Agent-Pay," is the tool I wish I'd had. It's an AI-powered agent built for the 'Payments for Real-World Assets' track. We empower an enterprise to use simple human language, like a voice command, to set complex, conditional payment rules. For example: "Pay our Japanese supplier the moment their goods are confirmed at port." The AI agent handles the entire execution. This is powered by our PaymentRouter.sol smart contract, which functions as a “conditional vault” deployed on the Arc Network. First, the payment (USDC) is transferred to this secure vault, where the funds are held in escrow. The contract is designed to interact only with Arc’s official USDC token, ensuring funds move only per the contract's conditions. The AI Agent operates off-chain, monitoring real-world data, such as a shipping confirmation. Once the condition is met, the agent triggers the backend to call the executePayment function. This is where the power of Arc is fully realised. The instant executePayment is called, Arc’s instant finality means the USDC is released from escrow to the supplier immediately. We haven't just sped up a payment. We have built the mechanism that turns a 5-day, high-risk, manual process into a 3-second, autonomous, and secure settlement.