Cryptocurrency payments are emerging as the transactional layer for AI agents, as traditional card payment infrastructure is ill-suited for microtransactions. This is highlighted in a report by Keyrock.
From May 2025 to April 2026, AI agents conducted over 176 million on-chain transactions totaling more than $73 million, with nearly all payments made in USDC.
The primary demand is for payments related to data, computing power, APIs, and content without human involvement. An example cited is a trading agent that automatically pays small amounts for market data and cloud infrastructure.
Keyrock identified four architectures for agent payments:
- x402 from Coinbase;
- Machine Payments Protocol from Stripe and Tempo;
- Agent Payments Protocol from Google;
- Visa's card infrastructure for AI commerce.
The company believes these solutions are shaping a new payment stack, with Coinbase and Stripe already covering five of its six layers.
Major players have invested over $8 billion in deals and the development of agent transaction infrastructure. The segment received an additional boost following the preview launch of AWS Bedrock AgentCore Payments, with Coinbase and Stripe as the first partners of the service.
According to Gartner's forecast, by 2028, AI agents could facilitate purchases worth $15 trillion. McKinsey estimates the retail agent commerce market will reach $3–5 trillion by 2030.
Notably, in May, the Solana Foundation, in collaboration with Google Cloud, launched a payment system for AI agents called Pay.sh.