Coinbase lets businesses accept USDC payments from AI agents

Coinbase has announced a significant expansion in its AI-powered finance offerings by enabling businesses to accept USDC stablecoin payments from autonomous AI agents. This capability is facilitated through the x402 payment standard, which Coinbase originally introduced in May 2025 to support stablecoin transactions over HTTP specifically for AI agents, applications, and APIs. This development is part of a broader rollout that also includes new AI trading tools allowing users to monitor orders, access live market data, and execute trades based on predefined conditions, alongside a software development kit for developers creating agent-powered applications.

The company described these new products as essential for the emerging “agentic economy,” where AI-driven agents can autonomously make payments, manage finances, and perform various tasks on users' behalf. Coinbase highlighted a recent metric indicating that agent-generated traffic on its Base documentation pages surpassed human traffic for the first time last month, underscoring the increasing adoption of AI agents. The company also pointed out the challenge posed by the current financial infrastructure of the internet, which was built on the assumption that humans would be the ones initiating transactions, leaving a gap in tools suited for AI agents.

This initiative aligns with a growing trend among companies seeking to position stablecoins and blockchain-based payment systems as critical infrastructure for AI agents, reflecting a new use case being actively pursued by exchanges and payment platforms. Coinbase’s move signals an effort to update financial tools and platforms to accommodate the evolving demands of AI-driven interactions and transactions.