Coinbase Bets on AI Agent Payment Infrastructure to Drive Growth With USDC and Base
AI agents can autonomously purchase data, computing power and services, but they need low-cost, programmable payment rails that operate around the clock. With crypto markets subdued and its trading business under pressure, Coinbase sees agent payments as an opportunity to diversify revenue. It plans to use USDC as the settlement asset, Base as the low-fee execution layer and x402 to connect websites and APIs.
On March 18, 2026, Coinbase Chief Business Officer Shan Aggarwal said agent payments were one of the company’s top priorities. The same day, Stripe and Tempo released the open MPP standard, while Visa introduced card specifications and an SDK to support the technology. On April 25, Base founder Jesse Pollak said x402 had processed about $48 million in cumulative payments, with roughly 95% of transactions taking place on Base.
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The history behind this eventCoinbase and AWS Launch USDC Payment Rails for AI Agents
Coinbase’s x402 is an open payment protocol based on the HTTP 402 “Payment Required” status code. It allows AI agents to purchase APIs, MCP servers and online content on a pay-per-use basis without signing up for subscriptions or waiting for manual checkout. The machine-to-machine payment mechanism is significant because it allows businesses to manage budgets, permissions, compliance and audit records at the same time.
AWS and Coinbase announced a preview of Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Payments on May 7, 2026, with native integration of x402 service discovery and Coinbase wallet infrastructure. AI agents can settle payments instantly in USDC on Base and Solana, pay less than 1 cent per service transaction and autonomously transact through more than 10,000 pay-per-use endpoints.
Agentic Payments on Base Surpass 100 Million Transactions
Coinbase's Layer 2 network Base focuses on low-cost onchain transactions. In May 2025, Coinbase launched the x402 protocol, enabling software agents to automatically pay USDC through HTTP requests when accessing data or APIs, without requiring human approval for each transaction. The protocol allows AI agents to purchase digital services directly and represents a key test of whether machine-to-machine payments can scale.
Chainalysis said on June 3, 2026, that x402 transactions on Base had surpassed 100 million within three quarters, rising from nearly zero in mid-2025 through the first quarter of 2026. Transactions of more than $1 increased their share of total transfer value from 49% in early 2025 to 95% in early 2026. Some of the initial growth came from a PING minting campaign that paid participants 1 USDC.
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