AI agents completed about 14 million transfers through Coinbase’s x402 payment protocol over the past 30 days, highlighting a possible new source of demand for stablecoins as software increasingly gains the ability to spend money without direct human approval.
Data from Token Terminal shows that Base processed the largest share of the activity, with 7.3 million transfers, while Polygon handled a further 5.6 million. USDC was used in virtually all of the transactions, accounting for roughly 14 million transfers in total.
The figures provide an early indication of how autonomous software could support the development of machine-to-machine commerce. Rather than waiting for a person to approve each payment, an AI agent can be programmed to obtain and pay for services whenever they are required.
That could include purchasing computing power, accessing data or paying to use an application programming interface. Such payments may be frequent, cross-border and too small or irregular to fit easily within traditional payment systems.
How x402 works
The x402 protocol was developed by Coinbase as an open standard based on the web’s HTTP 402 “Payment Required” mechanism. It allows software to request and complete payments automatically.
Coinbase has expanded its facilitator across Base, Solana and Polygon, while USDC is supported as a settlement asset. The latest figures show Base and Polygon handling most of the recorded activity, although the monetary layer is dominated by a single stablecoin.
The 14 million transfers do not represent 14 million separate AI agents making purchases. A single agent can initiate many transactions. However, the frequency of the activity offers an early view of a payments market that has only recently begun operating at meaningful scale.
For Circle, the issuer of USDC, wider use of autonomous software could increase stablecoin demand beyond established areas such as human trading, remittances and corporate settlement.
The growth follows Coinbase’s July launch of a service that allows businesses to accept USDC payments directly from AI agents through Coinbase Business. Coinbase said it regarded agentic payments as one of its “high-conviction bets”.
Under the service, businesses can receive, reconcile and cash out payments made by AI agents through the same account they use for other Coinbase services.
That launch linked the merchant side of the market with Coinbase’s wider agent infrastructure, including x402 and the Base network. It also established a developing pattern in which blockchain networks compete to process transactions while USDC captures much of the settlement activity.
Stablecoins were created to move dollar-denominated value quickly across blockchain networks. The rise of AI agents could give that infrastructure a significantly larger potential market, with software able to transact continuously and globally without a human ever opening a checkout page.
Coinbase is continuing to expand its support for businesses accepting USDC payments from AI agents through Coinbase Business, alongside its broader development of the systems underpinning x402 and agent-based payments.
