Coinbase's x402 payment protocol processed more than 138 million transactions on Base during Chainalysis' 2026 reporting period, according to a report the blockchain analytics firm published on Wednesday. The recorded activity includes AI agents autonomously purchasing data, software tools, and access to AI models. The protocol takes its name from the HTTP 402 "Payment Required" status code, which the web's early specifications reserved for payment use but which remained dormant until Coinbase introduced x402 in 2025. It is designed to allow payments to be made directly over the internet — infrastructure aimed at software that needs to buy and use digital resources on its own.

Micropayments Make Up the Bulk of Activity

Chainalysis found that more than 87% of analyzed x402 payments ranged from $0.0001 to $0.10. Purchases at this scale are costly to handle through traditional card networks, whose fixed per-transaction fees make fractional-cent pricing economically unviable, while stablecoins allow software to settle such transactions without requiring human approval for every payment.

Other blockchains are also testing payment capacity for automated software. On October 7, Sui reported 40.6 million transactions per second in an off-chain test involving simulated AI agent activity. That figure reflects a stress test, not completed on-chain purchases.

US Wallets Lead AI Model Spending

US-linked wallets accounted for 88.1% of geographically identified x402 payments for AI model inference, while Chinese-linked wallets represented just 0.1%, the report found. American wallets also generated 41.8% of identified payments for agent frameworks and related tools.

China showed a different spending pattern. Chinese-linked wallets made roughly 90% of tracked security and code-analysis payments, most of which went to AgentLISA, a smart contract auditing service. Chainalysis noted that free-to-use models such as DeepSeek and Qwen may reduce demand for paid model access.

Repeat Funding Rises as Onboarding Time Shrinks

Payment infrastructure for AI agents extends beyond Base. Ripple's partnership with Stripe-owned Privy brings embedded wallets to XRP Ledger applications. Those wallets can support XRP, RLUSD, and automated payments through the x402 standard.

Chainalysis also tracked an increase in repeat wallet funding. Among qualifying wallets initially funded during the second quarter of 2026, 89.3% received another deposit within 30 days. That compares with 70.6% for comparable wallets from the third quarter of 2025.

The time between initial funding and a wallet's first x402 payment also fell sharply, from a median of 73 days in late 2025 to 18 minutes during the third quarter of 2026.

Stablecoins Draw Interest From Banks

Wells Fargo outlined its preparations for stablecoins as financial institutions explore digital settlement systems — the same always-on settlement layer that agent payments rely on.

Chainalysis based its findings on observable x402 transactions rather than all spending by AI agents, and the volume of transfers does not establish their commercial value. Its research covered payments for data, financial information, code reviews, and other automated digital services. The repeat-funding rates, onboarding times, and geographic spending splits it documents give future reporting periods concrete benchmarks for whether machine-initiated payments broaden beyond current users.

The full report is available on Chainalysis.

This article was originally published on CoinCentral.