Bernstein said agentic AI payments could present a long-term growth opportunity for stablecoins, even though adoption across current machine-payment protocols remains limited and not yet a key driver of the broader stablecoin investment case.
In a Monday note shared with Cointelegraph, the broker explained that stablecoins could enable machine-to-machine transactions by supporting low-cost microtransactions and allowing programmable, conditional payments between software agents without human involvement.
However, early traction has been modest. Stripe and Tempo’s machine payments protocol processed roughly $5,000 in stablecoin volume during its first week, while Coinbase’s x402 protocol handled under $25 million over the past 30 days, with estimates placing it closer to $24 million. The x402 standard enables AI agents to automatically send payments over the internet.
Bernstein emphasized that stablecoins don’t rely on AI-driven payments to continue expanding. Demand is already being fueled by use cases such as cross-border transactions, remittances, card-linked financial products, and neobanking services—making AI payments more of a potential upside than a core growth driver.
The report comes amid rising interest in autonomous payment systems. Last week, Visa’s crypto division introduced a tool enabling AI agents to execute same-day payments, coinciding with the launch of a blockchain-based payment protocol by Stripe-backed Tempo.
Bernstein said that broader payment use cases remain the primary growth driver for stablecoins. The firm estimates total stablecoin payment volume rose to $375 billion in 2025, up from $213 billion in 2024, largely driven by consumer-to-consumer transactions, alongside growth in business-to-consumer, business-to-business, and consumer-to-business activity.
Coinbase, Circle seen as key proxies
Coinbase and Circle were identified as the “best proxies” for gaining exposure to stablecoin growth, largely due to their partnership around USDC.
Bernstein added that USDC is well-positioned to dominate machine-payment use cases, citing its strong liquidity and regulatory standing compared to other stablecoins.
So far in 2026, USDC has recorded $2.4 trillion in adjusted transaction volume, significantly outpacing Tether’s USDt, which has seen around $1.4 trillion over the same period.
Wash trading concerns cloud early metrics
Some of the early machine-payment figures have already raised doubts among analysts.
Noah Levine said that AI agent payment volume on Coinbase’s x402 protocol drops to just $1.6 million after applying a wash trading filter developed by Artemis Analytics—far below the roughly $24 million figure initially reported by Bloomberg.
The discrepancy highlights how early-stage data in emerging payment systems may be inflated by non-organic activity, complicating efforts to assess real adoption.
“$1.6 million is not a big number. But the infrastructure being built around it is,” wrote Levine in a March 11 X post, adding that x402 was already integrated by the likes of Stripe, Cloudflare, Vercel and Google’s agent payments protocol.
