Hassan Maishera
On Thursday, the Near Protocol announced via X that NEAR AI and Abound, the financial super-app for Indians abroad by The Times of India Group, are partnering to deploy AI financial agents for cross-border payments.
The pilot puts IronClaw-powered agents inside the Abound app to securely monitor Indian bank accounts, track fixed deposit maturity, and execute remittances when user-defined exchange rate conditions are met.
Abound currently serves over 800,000 Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) and has processed more than $300 million in remittance volume. This deployment marks NEAR AI’s first integration in cross-border payments and the beginning of a broader effort to give NRIs AI agents that can not only execute transactions but help manage their complete financial life across borders.
In this deployment, IronClaw agents connect to Indian financial accounts through India’s Account Aggregator network: a regulated, consent-based data rail supported by major banks including ICICI, HDFC, and SBI. No bank credentials are stored at any point in the flow. NEAR AI provides managed agent hosting and inference routing across leading models, while Abound owns the user experience, the customer relationship, and distribution.
NEAR Protocol is a decentralized application platform designed to make apps similarly usable to those on today’s web. The network runs on a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism called Nightshade, which aims to provide dynamic scalability and stabilize fees.
NEAR combines three core elements: User-Owned AI, which ensures agents act in users’ best interests; Intents and Chain Abstraction, which eliminate blockchain complexity for seamless, goal-driven transactions across chains; and a sharded blockchain architecture that delivers the scalability, speed, and low-cost execution needed for real-world AI and Web3 use.
NEAR Protocol is unique because it was purpose-built for AI from day one—not retrofitted after the fact. Founded by AI researchers, its architecture was designed to support intelligent systems at scale. With Nightshade sharding, NEAR can handle billions of transactions without congestion or rising fees. Developers can build using familiar languages like JavaScript and Rust, onboard users without wallets, and tap into other blockchains without bridges through Chain Signatures and NEAR Intents. Its progressive security model, low-predictable fees, and native support for AI agents make NEAR the most practical blockchain for building the next generation of autonomous applications.
NEAR is trading at $1.20, up 3.5% in the last 24 hours.
