The reason for users is that this allows AI agents to do research, planning, decision-making, and trading in cryptocurrencies, stocks, and derivatives and other finances. Coinbase has also launched Coinbase Advisor, an AI-powered investment advisor within its app.
The larger emphasis is, however, providing agents with access points to payments, without needing to resort to traditional, agent-dependent checkout methods.
x402 Turns AI Agents Into Paying Customers
Coinbase claims its x402 protocol offers an open standardized protocol for machine-to-machine payments. It can be utilized by AI agents to make payments directly, without any human having to authorize each transaction.
Since its launch last year, the company indicated x402’s transaction volume is already over $100 million. It also states that 90% of transaction volume of on-chain agentic stablecoins is now being processed on Base, Coinbase’s Ethereum Layer-2 solution.
Now, Coinbase is collaborating with companies such as AWS to seamlessly allow AI agents to make instant payment for the services they utilize.
USDC Payments Move Into the Agent Economy
Coinbase Business is also being sold as the payment rails for businesses that cater to AI agents. Without defining a separate payment flow, businesses can receive USDC from business agents via x402 support.
Coinbase has a number of features highlighted, including no original charge-back risk, 3.35% rewards for holding idle USDC, and tools to manage, reconcile and withdraw from one account.
Coinbase has also released the Coinbase Developer Store (CDP x402) SDK for developers, enabling the inclusion of payments from their agents in API or MCPs with minimal code added. That reduces the technical hurdle for developers who wish to deploy their applications and have automated payments taken without being versed in the x402 protocol.
Agentic.Market Adds a Discovery Layer
Money alone should never be considered if agents can’t find services to procure. Coinbase is also tying up at the Agentic.Operate as a discovery service for x402-compatible services. Payment flow is simple: agents start finding available services, pinpoint what services they require, and make the payment automatically.
Instead of marking AI payments as a stand-alone crypto product, Coinbase is seeking to build an end-to-end program around the idea of financial transactions, stablecoin payments, developer infrastructure, and service discovery, specifically through AiFi.
