Vincent Chok, CEO and founder of First Digital/Image: Supplied
The rise of autonomous AI agents is forcing a rethink of how money moves through the global financial system. While banks, cards, and payment rails were designed for humans and corporates, they struggle to accommodate machines that operate continuously, independently, and at speed. According to Vincent Chok, CEO and founder of First Digital (issuer of the fiat-backed stablecoin FDUSD), this mismatch is structural, not incremental.
“Traditional payment rails were built for human identity, not AI agents,” Chok said. “Current banking systems rely on deliberate consent, such as CAPTCHA, 3D Secure, and OTPs, that require a human in the loop.”
That requirement alone makes conventional finance incompatible with autonomous systems. “Without using digital assets like stablecoins, we are essentially trying to give a credit card to a machine that doesn’t have a face for biometrics or a thumb for a scanner,” he said. “This creates a structural identity gap that only digital-native rails can bridge through the use of AI agents transacting with digital assets like stablecoins.”
At the core of the problem is how financial identity is defined. “This reflects an evolution in how financial identity is defined,” Chok said. “Humans participate in the financial system through legal identity, and corporations through legal personhood, but autonomous AI agents require a different construct altogether.”
That construct, he argues, is economic identity. “An economic identity, defined by wallets, predefined spending limits, and cryptographic rules rather than physical presence or human approval.”
In practical terms, this shifts the basis of trust from paperwork and intermediaries to code and cryptography. It also explains why stablecoins and smart contracts are becoming foundational to agentic finance.
Why stablecoins fit machine-driven finance
Stablecoins remove the temporal and operational constraints of legacy banking. “Stablecoins turn money into programmable code, allowing financial settlement to happen at the same speed as the AI’s thought process,” Chok said.
While bank transfers can take days, the blockchain operates continuously. “By moving money to the blockchain, we shift from processing that sleeps on weekends and holidays to a 24/7 liquidity layer, settling transactions in seconds, any time, any day.”
Smart contracts add conditional logic to payments themselves. “Smart contracts allow us to embed the logic of a deal (if X happens, only then execute Y) directly into the currency itself, ensuring that payment only moves when a specific task is cryptographically verified.”
This combination enables financial activity that does not require supervision, escalation, or reconciliation after the fact, a prerequisite for machine-to-machine commerce.
Through its Finance District platform, First Digital is enabling AI agents to execute real-time stablecoin transactions. The result is a new category of use cases that were previously impractical.
“We are unlocking a world of autonomous machine-to-machine commerce,” Chok said. “In the UAE, we are seeing this play out in ‘Autonomous Procurement’, where an AI agent can monitor inventory, place orders with suppliers, and settle the payment in stablecoins without any human intervention in the process.”
The implication is broader than procurement automation. “This transforms AI into an independent economic actor capable of managing budget, revenue, and supply chains,” he said. “Relieving humans from these mundane or repetitive tasks so that human workers can focus on more critical issues.”
In effect, AI moves from decision support to economic execution.
Risk, guardrails, and “Know Your Agent”
Allowing autonomous systems to move money inevitably raises concerns about risk. Chok argues that traditional controls are poorly suited to the agentic era.
“Security in the agentic era isn’t about human permission…it’s about hard-coded regulations built into the financial rail,” he said.
Smart contracts allow governance to be enforced at transaction level. “By using smart-contract guardrails, we can implement ‘Know Your Agent’ (KYA) protocols that set fixed spending limits and merchant whitelists that an AI cannot override.”
Auditability is also native rather than retrospective. “Since every transaction is public and permanently recorded on the blockchain, we gain a level of real-time auditability that traditional banking simply cannot match.”
Instead of trusting systems, rules are enforced automatically. “We are replacing simply trusting a machine with certainty via cryptographic constraints,” Chok said. “Ensuring that if an agent attempts to move funds outside of its defined parameters, the hard-coded guardrails reject the transaction.”
Beyond AI, stablecoins are already reshaping how people are paid, particularly in the UAE’s highly international labour market.
“It is not surprising that such a high share of UAE freelancers prefer stablecoins,” Chok said. “The country is home to one of the world’s largest expatriate populations, with foreign workers comprising 88 per cent of residents.”
For globally mobile workers, traditional banking creates friction. “Many freelancers — be it local or international — are paid by overseas entities or regularly move money across borders.”
Stablecoins address that pain directly. “Low transaction fees, near-instant settlement, and stable value without the friction of traditional banking rails.”
He also points to regulatory pragmatism. “The UAE has also tailored its financial infrastructure to these realities,” Chok said. “It is one of the few jurisdictions where companies can design payroll systems that maintain fiat compliance for domestic staff while offering crypto flexibility for international hires.”
Contrary to the view that regulation slows innovation, Chok sees the UAE’s approach as deployment-driven.
“Regulatory clarity can either instil confidence in digital assets, or introduce friction through increased bureaucracy,” he said. “The UAE is taking a deployment-focused approach, providing comprehensive frameworks that allow users to adopt digital assets with certainty.”
The rollout of AE Coin illustrates this model. “Following its license approval by the Central Bank of UAE in 2024, the UAE’s first dirham-backed stablecoin was deliberately integrated into real-world payments by mid-2025,” Chok said.
Adoption has followed quickly. “The fuel and convenience retailer ADNOC Distribution now accepts the AE Coin across its 980 service stations.”
Rather than sitting alongside banking, AE Coin acts as connective tissue. “This regulatory framework positions AE Coin as a bridge between traditional banking and blockchain-based finance.”
The complexity of compliance increases sharply when AI enters the financial system.
“Companies often underestimate how compliance processes differ during the transition from human actors to AI agents,” Chok said. “While humans can be verified through standard procedures such as AML and KYC, the frameworks for vetting AI agents are less established.”
That gap is also an opportunity. “This market gap also points to an opportunity for companies to provide compliance solutions for vetting AI systems.”
Operating across borders adds another layer. “Both the global stablecoin and agentic AI landscapes are fragmented,” he said. “To navigate cross-jurisdictional operations, it is critical to secure active licenses and registrations and aligns with local regulations.”
Phased deployment matters. “Phased rollouts, supported by local risk audits and legal counsel, also help keep compliance and operational risks manageable across multiple markets.”
The next five years of agentic finance
Looking ahead, Chok expects AI agents to become embedded across financial activity.
“Over the next five years, we can expect AI agents to be embedded within institutional and retail transactions alike, using stablecoins as the key settlement asset.”
The role of AI will be highly contextual. “These AI agents could make payments on behalf of individuals or businesses, with AI models tailored to different user needs across the automated financial ecosystem.”
Financial inclusion is also part of the equation. “Stablecoins have a track record of improving financial access for the unbanked,” he said. “Combining them with AI tools can make this process even more efficient.”
The UAE, he believes, will play a defining role. “The UAE is poised to lead the growing convergence of stablecoins and agentic payments.”
Its advantage lies in scale and execution. “The region’s combination of sovereign-scale stablecoin initiatives and readiness for AI-driven payments create the network effects that many other jurisdictions lack.”
By focusing on deployment rather than theory, Chok sees the UAE setting a global template. “By homing in on its strengths in real-world adoption and innovation, the UAE serves as a blueprint for integrating AI, stablecoins, and traditional financial institutions on a global scale.”
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