Payments could provide cryptocurrency applications with the frequent, everyday engagement that token swaps alone often fail to generate, according to speakers across four panels hosted by ChangeNOW at TOKEN2049 Singapore. The point carries weight for a product category whose activity has tended to follow trading cycles rather than daily financial habits. The sessions brought together representatives from MetaMask, Trezor, WalletConnect and other companies to examine how crypto products could reach a broader audience.

Payments emerge as the everyday anchor for super apps

The super app model, popularized by consumer platforms that bundle messaging, payments and other daily services into one application, has been a recurring ambition in crypto — the question the panel pressed on was which service could anchor it. During the super app discussion, Rubic co-founder Aleksandra Korneva observed that many swap users have no reason to transact every day. Pulsar Money CEO Alex Radu identified payments and trading as two possible foundations for applications that combine multiple financial services.

"They just want to transact in a safe and secure and cheap way," she said.

CoinRoutes' Michelle Herman expressed more caution about a single application that does everything. She argued that specialized services continue to play a role and stressed the importance of protecting customer information while delivering reliable execution.

Wallet builders weigh AI agents against user visibility

The wallet panel examined how much of a transaction an application should manage on a user's behalf. Yana, ChangeNOW's Head of Business Development & Account Management, cited gas requirements as one source of friction in cross-chain swaps.

MetaMask's representative discussed the use of AI agents to carry out transactions, while Trezor's software product lead, Denis, described exploring how a hardware device could let users approve agent-initiated actions. The exchange reflects a design question now facing consumer software broadly: how much autonomy to grant AI agents acting on a user's behalf. Hardware wallets have long relied on physical confirmation for each transaction, and the approach Denis described would extend that same human check to agent-initiated activity.

Denis also cautioned against hiding every detail in the pursuit of a simpler interface, saying information should remain available whenever users need it.

Infrastructure panel calls for simpler and more private payments

On the infrastructure panel, WalletConnect's Diana Alexandrova argued that everyday payments should not demand technical expertise. "They don't have to be cryptographers," she said of users.

Aztec Labs highlighted privacy as another requirement for wider adoption, pointing out that businesses would not want employee payments publicly visible — an exposure inherent to public blockchains, where transaction records can be read by anyone. Banxa advocated cooperation between specialized infrastructure providers, while RocketX described bringing liquidity from different sources into a unified interface.

AI search reshapes how crypto products find their audience

A separate discussion on audience growth considered how users will discover such products as AI reshapes search. The shift matters for distribution: as discovery moves from ranked search results toward AI-generated answers, strategies built on search visibility carry less weight. Media participants described investing more in interviews, podcasts and direct relationships with readers as search traffic becomes harder to depend on.

CoinEasy offered a more local perspective, saying its Korean community and domestic search presence had limited the impact so far. It also described efforts to reach people through AI tools and to expand offline events and physical products for its community.

ChangeNOW's super app push at TOKEN2049

TOKEN2049 Singapore took place on October 7–8 at Marina Bay Sands, drawing around 25,000 attendees, 500 exhibitors and 300 speakers. ChangeNOW, which began as a no-KYC platform, now positions itself as a crypto super app that brings swapping, storage and other tools together in one place.

Its presence at the event also included a co-branded CoolWallet × ChangeNOW hardware wallet with ChangeNOW built in as the exclusive in-app swap provider, as well as a Global Stage talk by Chief Strategy Officer Pauline Shangett titled "Next Billion Users Should Never Touch Blockchain."

How much of this moves from panel discussion into shipped products — from built-in swaps to hardware-confirmed agent actions — is likely to be one measure of whether the super app model can hold everyday users.

Primary sources: Panel video 1, Panel video 2, Panel video 3, Panel video 4, changenow.io