A new report from Keyrock, a global crypto investment group leading in market making, asset management, OTC, and options trading for digital assets, finds that since May 2025, artificial intelligence (AI) agents have settled more than $73 million in approximately 176 million trades, forming four competing payment architectures backed by the biggest names in the technology industry.
Important points:
- Keyrock’s May 2026 report found that AI agents closed $73 million on 176 million transactions in just 12 months, with 98.6% settlement. $USDC.
- Coinbase and Stripe each span five of the six payment stack tiers, while the incumbents have deployed more than $8 billion in acquisitions.
- MiCA, $genius It and the EU AI law are all due to come into force by August 2, 2026, but none cover machine-to-machine payments.
Keyrock’s “Who Pays Agents” Analysis: $USDC Monopolizes 98.6% of AI agent payments
This report, co-published with Coinbase, Tempo, and Virtuals, documents how machine-to-machine payments have transitioned from a theoretical concept to a functioning ecosystem in one year. Agents now pay for API access, data queries, and computing resources in real time without human involvement. The average transaction value has remained stable around $0.48.
Coinbase built x402, a protocol that reuses the long-dormant HTTP 402 status code to enable machine-to-machine stablecoin payments. Stripe and Tempo co-created the Machine Payments Protocol, known as MPP. It is a payment method agnostic standard that processes stablecoin, credit card, and Lightning Network payments through a single HTTP flow. Google released AP2, an authorization layer that allows users to delegate spending authority to agents using cryptographic privileges. Visa has extended its existing card rail to provide AI-enabled tokenized credentials that agents can present at checkout.
According to Keyrock’s analysis, these four protocols are not purely competing. They are assembled into layered stacks. AP2 handles authorization. x402 and MPP process payments under it. This report focuses on which companies are capturing the most demographics and therefore attracting the most value.
According to the report, Coinbase and Stripe each span five of the six stack tiers. Coinbase controls payments through Base, wallets through the AgentKit platform, payment protocols through x402, and governance as a partner in AP2. Stripe mirrors this through Tempo for payments, Privy for wallets, Bridge for routing, and MPP for protocol layers. The circle covers four layers. Google and Visa currently span two and one companies, respectively.
For economic reasons, cryptocurrency rails are almost mandatory in this market. According to Keyrock data, 76% of agent transactions are below the $0.30 fixed fee floor charged by card networks. a $USDC Transferring money with Base costs approximately $0.0001. This equates to approximately 0.03 percent of a $0.31 payment. Stripe charges a $0.309 fee for the same payment, leaving the seller with a $0.001 fee.
One of the most intensive findings in the report is the dominance of stablecoins. Of the 176 million payments recorded, 98.6% were cleared. $USDC. Keyrock has flagged this as a systemic risk, and few companies in the industry are publicly addressing it. Should Circle face regulatory challenges, depegging events, or technical failures, the agent payments ecosystem has no alternative.
Incumbent companies have secured positions across the stack through acquisitions. Capital One acquired Brex for $5.15 billion. Mastercard acquired BVNK for $1.8 billion. Stripe acquired Bridge for $1.1 billion. Together, these and related transactions amount to more than $8 billion deployed in 12 months.
Keyrock points out that machines already dominate on-chain activity. At Gnosis Chain, AI agents through the Olas network account for over 75% of secure transactions on peak days. In Base and Optimism, bots and automated contracts consume over 50% of gas. Current activities are mainly mining, such as arbitrage and volume farming. The new infrastructure is designed to enable a shift to productive agent commerce, where agents pay for services that create value for end users.
The report also points to the failure of OpenAI’s ChatGPT instant checkout, which was shelved in March 2026 after only about 30 Shopify merchants actively used it. The product lacked sales tax collection, fraud prevention, and multi-item cart support. Keyrock interprets this result as confirmation that agents transacting through protocol endpoints, rather than visual checkout flows, is a viable model.
Regulatory uncertainty is a binding constraint identified across all sections. The three main frameworks will come into force within weeks of each other. The MiCA transition period ends on July 1, 2026. $genius The law is due to come into force on July 18th, and the EU AI law’s high-risk obligations will come into force on August 2nd. Neither includes provisions for autonomous machine-to-machine transactions.
Responsibility remains unresolved. With credit cards, merchants take on the risk of chargebacks and consumers have protection. In the case of stablecoins, once the funds are deposited into the merchant’s wallet, they cannot be retrieved. As Coinbase’s x402 creator Erik Reppel told Keyrock, the risk lies entirely with the consumer. American Express was the first to address this issue commercially, launching Agent Purchase Protection on April 14, 2026, to cover erroneous purchases made by verified agents within its registered ecosystem.
The report concludes that the machine economy already exists. We haven’t done any meaningful transactions yet. The infrastructure is ready. Regulations are not clear.
