South Korea’s NH Nonghyup Card is testing a system that could let AI agents find products, apply purchase conditions and complete payments using stablecoins.
NH Nonghyup Card is exploring a system that would let an artificial intelligence agent do the shopping and pay the bill on a customer’s behalf, in a sign of how quickly payment firms are beginning to test the next phase of digital commerce.
The South Korean card issuer said on Wednesday that it has begun concept verification with AhnLab Blockchain Company for what it calls “agentic payment” technology. Under the proposal, a customer would first set conditions such as product type, price and discount threshold. The AI would then search for a matching item, complete the purchase and settle the transaction using a stablecoin, while the card company checks and finalises the payment. In the example given by the company, a shopper could instruct the system to buy 300g of first-grade Hanwoo sirloin only when it is discounted by at least 20% and priced at no more than 8,000 won per 100g.
The project is built around x402, an open payment protocol designed for web-based machine-to-machine transactions. According to materials from Coinbase and other industry explainers, x402 revives the HTTP 402 “Payment Required” response code and is intended to let software agents make payments without human intervention. The broader idea of agentic payments is gaining traction across the payments industry, with other groups also working on agent-focused systems that rely on scoped credentials, signed mandates and different settlement rails, including card networks and on-chain stablecoin transfers.
NH Nonghyup Card said the test will cover the AI agent interface, the conversational screen design, digital wallet links, and systems for transaction verification and settlement. It also plans to try out payment and settlement using stablecoins in a test environment, rather than real funds. The company said it will then examine whether the approach could be linked with its NH Pay service and existing financial payment network, and determine whether the model has commercial value.
The experiment comes as stablecoins and autonomous payment tools move from concept to pilot stage. Industry overviews from Eco and other blockchain-focused groups say agentic commerce is increasingly being framed as a way to reduce the friction of online shopping, where users now have to handle product search, price comparison and checkout themselves. NH Nonghyup Card said the work is intended to build technical readiness for an AI-driven payment environment, even as the company stops short of committing to a full-scale launch.
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