Coinbase launched a new feature allowing over 5,000 businesses to accept payments in USDC directly from AI agents through Coinbase Business. This development brings autonomous software into the payment flow without requiring companies to create separate checkout systems.
Using Coinbase’s open standard, x402, designed for machine-to-machine transactions, merchants can now receive, manage, and convert payments sent by AI programs within their existing Coinbase Business accounts. Siddharth Coelho-Prabhu, leading Coinbase Business, highlighted that sellers can now transact easily with AI agents online while handling all reconciliation in one place.
Stablecoins Poised to Power Autonomous Transactions
Coinbase views AI agent payments as a strategic growth area and has invested in this vision for several years. Internal data shows that AI-driven traffic on Coinbase’s Base documentation has exceeded human visits, signaling the rise of autonomous online commerce. USDC is positioned as the key settlement currency across Base and other compatible blockchains, enabling AI agents to create wallets, hold funds, and pay merchants smoothly.
Brian Armstrong, Coinbase’s CEO, described this shift as the emergence of an “agentic economy” requiring new financial infrastructure, which Coinbase aims to provide. Since its launch in June 2025, Coinbase Business has processed around $1 billion in payments and trading volume, rewarding idle USDC balances with 3.35% returns and eliminating chargeback risks typical of card payments.
Current AI agent use cases focus mainly on digital products: buying API access, cloud storage, domain registrations, and other online services. Coinbase is also enhancing real-time trading features to strengthen the link between AI agents and financial markets.
