Crypto Rails Processed $73M in AI Agent Payments Over 12 Months

Stablecoin News

AI agents spending money autonomously online are still a small market, but a new report from crypto trading firm Keyrock has found that the infrastructure being built around autonomous agents is expanding at a pace that has drawn the largest names in technology and payments into direct competition.

Keyrock

AI agent activity on blockchain networks from May 2025 through April 2026. It found that agents settled more than $73 million across roughly 176 million transactions on-chain during that period. For context, Visa alone processes $14.5 trillion annually. The gap in absolute volume is large, but Keyrock argued the more meaningful signal is how fast the infrastructure layer is forming. #AI #stablecoins

The concept behind agentic payments is straightforward. Software agents increasingly buy digital services on their own, without a human needing to authorize each transaction. A single AI trading agent might purchase market data, cloud computing, and AI-generated analysis in small increments throughout the day. Traditional payment rails were not built for that kind of activity.

The economics explain why crypto rails are winning. Keyrock found that 76% of agent transactions fall below the 30-cent fixed fee common in card payments. Most payments ranged between 1 and 10 cents. Stablecoin settlement on networks such as Base and Stripe's Tempo blockchain costs fractions of a cent per transaction.