Schwartz Sees AI Agents Managing Money as XRPL AI Hub Tracks 14.5 Million Payments

Ripple CTO Emeritus David Schwartz described a possible future in which AI agents manage people's money, a broader role than the XRP Ledger's current automated payments for digital services.

In an interview published Sunday, Oct. 18, Schwartz discussed agents handling personal finances. He announced no Ripple product or launch date for that use. Existing tools focus on letting software pay for online resources.

At about 3:46 p.m. ET Monday, Oct. 19 (19:46 UTC), the XRPL AI Hub had tracked 14,547,668 transactions and listed 173 registered merchants. Cumulative settlements totaled 7,010.24 XRP and 16,509.25 Ripple USD (RLUSD). The transaction count covers payments captured by the Hub's tracking system; it does not count customers or every AI-agent transaction on the ledger.

Ripple introduced its XRPL AI Starter Kit on June 9 to support x402 payments with XRP or RLUSD. In that payment flow, an online service presents payment terms when software requests access. An application can then pay for an API, computing power or another digital service as part of the request.

The Hub's tracking method identifies payments through facilitator tags. Its all-time total therefore describes activity within that system, rather than all payments made by AI agents on the XRP Ledger. The settlement figures also give a different measure of that activity than the transaction count alone.

Privy announced a partnership with Ripple on Tuesday, Oct. 13, to bring programmable wallets to the XRP Ledger. The planned capabilities would let developers create wallets and sign transactions programmatically. They address how applications handle wallets and payments, while Schwartz's remarks describe a wider potential role involving a person's money.