Coinbase Business is adding a payment lane that lets merchants accept transactions from AI agents, built on the x402 standard it incubated. The exchange calls agentic payments one of its highest-conviction bets and says bots are already buying from real businesses.
Coinbase is rolling out a payments stack that lets businesses accept payments from AI bots, powered by Coinbase Payments and the x402 open internet payments standard it incubated. Head of Coinbase Business Siddharth Coelho-Prabhu said merchants already selling to humans can add a separate lane for agents without extra work.
A year-old unit makes its agentic bet
According to The Block, Coelho-Prabhu named agentic payments one of Coinbase's "most high-conviction bets." He said the exchange saw the shift coming two or three years ago and started to invest.
The launch lands on the first anniversary of Coinbase Business, which officially launched in June 2025. Since then, Coelho-Prabhu said the unit has signed up about 5,000 customers, handled about $1 billion in combined payments and trading volume, and grown to about 12 employees.
Building the full agent stack
The exchange is shipping more than the merchant lane. On Thursday it said it is launching Coinbase for Agents, which lets users plug AI setups into their trading and investment workflows, plus a software development kit for adding x402 payments across the web. It has also previously announced Coinbase Advisor, a Securities and Exchange Commission-registered AI-powered financial advisor.
Coelho-Prabhu said Coinbase now runs an end-to-end system where agents discover its documentation, spin up a wallet, get funded, pay a merchant, and settle on Base or other chains in USDC.
Early signs of demand
Growth in agentic payment volumes has been arguably muted, but Coelho-Prabhu pointed to signs the bots are multiplying. Starting in June, around 53% of web traffic for the Base blockchain's documentation came from agentic visitors, a Coinbase spokesperson told The Block.
The earliest adopters sit in what Coelho-Prabhu called the digital infrastructure space, using bots to buy Open Router credits, domain names, or Amazon and Google Cloud storage. Beyond that group, he said the company is very close to a broader wave of everyday commerce.
Source: The Block
Trading involves risk.
Risk Disclaimer
