Artificial intelligence agents have begun making purchases online, but the scale of these transactions appears far smaller than some reports suggest. Even so, major players in the cryptocurrency sector are investing billions of dollars to build the payment infrastructure that could support this emerging activity.

Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) partner Noah Levine noted in a Wednesday post on X that while AI agents are beginning to conduct payments, the available data remains inconsistent. He pointed out that a Bloomberg article published on Saturday claimed AI agents generated about $24 million in payments over a 30-day period, citing figures from x402.org.

Levine said alternative data from Allium Labs indicates a significantly lower total. According to that dataset, AI agent transactions over the same period amounted to roughly $3 million. After excluding wash trading activity, the estimated figure falls further to approximately $1.6 million. Levine emphasized that the ecosystem is still at a very early stage of development. “The gap tells you how early-stage even the measurement infrastructure is.”

Most of the current payment activity involving AI agents appears to be connected to developer-oriented tools. For example, Firecrawl, a service that converts websites into AI-ready datasets, sells web scraping access for one cent per query. Browserbase, which provides an AI-focused browser environment, charges for browser sessions. Freepik’s AI image platform offers paid image generation services.

“These companies all accept cards, but x402 lets a developer or agent try the tool once without committing to a subscription,” Levine noted. The x402 protocol, created by Coinbase, is a payment standard designed to enable AI agents to automatically send payments over the internet.

Infrastructure investments are accelerating

Although transaction volumes remain modest, adoption of the infrastructure supporting agent-driven payments continues to expand. Levine explained that several large internet and payments companies, including Stripe, Cloudflare, and Vercel, have already integrated the x402 system. Google has also incorporated it into its own agent payments protocol.

He added that the currently observed $1.6 million in transaction volume is relatively small, but the broader industry is building systems for a future in which autonomous agents may become significant participants in online commerce. “None of them are betting on $1.6 million a month. They are betting on what the number looks like when agents become the default buyer.”

Levine also explained that while humans are still involved in many processes, the interactions often occur through agent-based platforms such as Claude Code and the OpenClaw personal AI assistant, making transactions partially automated.

Expansion to new blockchain networks

Coinbase also announced that its x402 Facilitator will now support the Ethereum layer-2 network Polygon. This update allows developers to accept payments in the stablecoin USDC on Polygon, as well as on Base and Solana. According to the company, blockchain networks that enable rapid settlement and maintain very low transaction fees are essential for enabling machine-to-machine payments.

“Networks optimized for quick settlement and minimal fees are essential to make these machine-to-machine payments viable,” the company stated. “Very soon, there are going to be more AI agents than humans making transactions,” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said on Monday.

Sources:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-07/stablecoin-firms-bet-big-on-ai-agent-payments-that-barely-exist

https://www.coinbase.com/en-sg/developer-platform/discover/launches/x402facilitator-polygon

https://cointelegraph.com/news/ai-agent-payment-volume-closer-to-1-6m-says-a16z

https://x.com/brian_armstrong/status/2031021867973194172

https://x.com/nlevine19/status/2031761011275956587