Coinbase is broadening its push into AI-powered finance with new tools that allow businesses to accept USDC payments from autonomous AI agents, alongside expanded payment, trading and developer products.

In a Thursday post on X, Coinbase said Coinbase Business users will be able to accept USDC (USDC) payments from AI agents through the x402 payment standard: https://x.com/coinbase/status/2080322207645863979?s=20. Coinbase first introduced x402 in May 2025 as a way to support stablecoin payments over HTTP for AI agents, applications and APIs. The standard's name references HTTP status code 402, which is reserved for payment-related responses but has historically gone unused in web infrastructure. The company's developer page for x402 is available at

The same announcement also introduced AI trading tools that allow users to monitor orders, access live market data and execute actions based on predefined conditions. Coinbase also announced a software development kit for developers building applications powered by AI agents.

Coinbase said the products are intended to support what it called the "agentic economy," in which AI agents can make payments, manage finances and complete other tasks on behalf of users. USDC, a dollar-pegged stablecoin issued by Circle, is particularly suited for agent-driven payments because it settles near-instantly on blockchains, operates around the clock, and can handle micro-transactions without traditional banking intermediaries.

The company said adoption of AI agents is accelerating. It noted that agent-generated traffic surpassed human traffic on its Base documentation pages for the first time last month. Base is Coinbase's Ethereum layer-2 network designed for low-cost, high-throughput applications. Coinbase added, however, that the internet's financial infrastructure was built around "one assumption: a human clicking the button," leaving businesses, developers and users without financial tools designed specifically for AI agents.

The rollout comes as more companies position stablecoins and blockchain-based payments as infrastructure for AI agents. The emerging use case is increasingly being targeted by exchanges and payment companies working on autonomous commerce and agent-based applications. Stripe acquired stablecoin payments platform Bridge in late 2024 for a reported $1.1 billion, and Visa has piloted stablecoin settlement on blockchains including Solana, signaling broader interest from legacy payment networks in token-based money movement.