Crypto rails are becoming the default payment layer for AI agents, report says
A new report from Keyrock says stablecoins on blockchain rails are becoming the go-to payment layer for AI agents as traditional card rails struggle to handle micropayments.
Crypto rails are becoming the default payment layer for AI agents, report says
A new report from Keyrock says stablecoins on blockchain rails are becoming the go-to payment layer for AI agents as traditional card rails struggle to handle micropayments.
Robots (Unsplash/Sumaid pal Singh Bakshi/Modified by CoinDesk)
What to know:
AI agents settled more than $73 million across 176 million blockchain transactions over the past year, according to Keyrock, though that remains a tiny fraction of the global payments market.
Coinbase, Stripe, Google and Visa are building competing infrastructure for machine-to-machine payments as software agents increasingly buy data, computing power and digital services autonomously.
Nearly all agent payments currently settle in USDC, highlighting both Circle’s growing importance in crypto payments and the risks of relying heavily on a single stablecoin issuer.
The broader idea behind agentic payments is that software increasingly consumes digital services autonomously rather than through human-managed subscriptions and accounts. An AI trading agent, for example, could continuously purchase market data, cloud computing or AI-generated analysis in tiny increments throughout the day without a human authorizing each payment manually.
That potential is driving ambitious forecasts how big the agentic payment sector could grow. Gartner projects AI agents could intermediate $15 trillion in purchases by 2028, while McKinsey estimated retail agentic commerce could reach $3 trillion-$5 trillion by 2030, according to the Keyrock report.
Those projections imply growth rates even faster than stablecoins experienced during their breakout years, the report said, but said the pace of infrastructure deployment already signals the market is moving beyond its experimentation phase.
Coinbase’s x402 protocol has emerged as one of the leading crypto-native systems. The protocol allows AI agents to pay directly with USDC for services such as blockchain analytics or cloud infrastructure without creating accounts or subscriptions.
Stripe, with its Tempo blockchain, launched a competing framework called Machine Payments Protocol (MPP), while Google introduced AP2, a system focused on delegated spending authorization for AI agents. Visa has extended its card network with tokenized credentials designed for AI-driven commerce.
Crypto rails and stablecoins are emerging as the preferred settlement layer, and the economics help explain why.
Some 76% of agent transactions fall below the 30 cent fixed-fee floor common in card payments, according to the report. Most payments ranged between one and 10 cents, making traditional rails impractical for automated software agents buying data, AI inference or API access. Meanwhile, stablecoin settlement on some blockchains like Base and Tempo costs fractions of a cent.
Currently, 98.6% of machine payments settle in USDC, the stablecoin issued by Circle (CRCL). That solidifies Circle’s position in crypto payments, but also introduces risk of concentration, creating dependency on a single issuer.
Regulation could be a source of constraint for the growth. MiCA in Europe, the U.S. GENIUS Act and the EU AI Act are all expected to take effect around mid-2026, yet none of them directly address autonomous machine-to-machine transactions or questions around liability and agent identity, the report noted.
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What to know:
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