Coinbase Rolls Out AI Agents Payment for Businesses in USDC, Calls it a ‘High-Conviction Bet’

Coinbase is allowing businesses to accept USDC payments directly from AI agents through Coinbase Business. The exchange is also expanding its agent trading tools and developer software as it bets that autonomous programs will become major participants in online commerce.

Coinbase is rolling out support for payments initiated by artificial intelligence (AI) agents through Coinbase Business. Merchants can accept USDC from autonomous software using x402, an open payment standard developed by Coinbase for machine-to-machine transactions.

The feature uses the same Coinbase Business account that companies already use to receive payments from people. Businesses can manage, reconcile, and convert agent payments without creating a separate checkout flow.

“A business owner can now sell their stuff to agents online,” Siddharth Coelho-Prabhu, head of Coinbase Business, said, as businesses can now manage, reconcile, and cash out agent payments, all in one account.

Coinbase views agent payments as one of its highest-conviction growth areas.

Coelho-Prabhu said the company began investing in the idea several years ago after concluding that AI agents would become a major force on the internet. Coinbase said agent traffic recently surpassed human traffic on its Base documentation pages.

The company is positioning USDC as the settlement layer for that activity. Agents can create wallets, receive funds, and pay merchants across Base and other supported networks.

Brian Armstrong, co-founder and CEO of Coinbase, tweeted, “The agentic economy is going to be huge; it needs new financial rails, and we’re building them.”

Businesses using the service can earn 3.35% in rewards on eligible idle USDC balances. Coinbase also says USDC payments do not carry traditional card chargeback risk, though foreign exchange and other charges may apply.

Early use cases are concentrated in digital services. AI agents are already purchasing access to application programming interfaces, cloud storage, domain names, and other online tools.

The new tools allow agents to monitor open orders, inspect market depth and follow live price and volume data. Users can also set conditions in natural language, such as selling bitcoin below a certain price or cancelling an order after a fixed period.

Coinbase said those actions remain subject to limits set by the user.

For developers, the exchange introduced an x402 software development kit that can add agent payments to an API, web service or AI server with minimal code. Its managed wallet tools also let developers apply spending controls.

Coinbase’s broader bet is that the next internet economy will serve two types of customers: people and software acting on their behalf.