Last updated: March 27, 2026

How AI agents will move $600M this year

AI agents settled $43 million across 140 million transactions in just nine months. Every major payment network is now racing to build the rails. The week of March 17-23, 2026 alone saw Mastercard's $1.8B acquisition of BVNK, Stripe's Tempo mainnet launch, and MoonPay's Open Wallet Standard release.

This is no longer speculative infrastructure. 98.6% of agent payments settle in USDC, and annualized volume is approaching $600M.

Five companies are trying to own the whole stack

Coinbase is the most vertically integrated, controlling settlement (Base), wallets (AgentKit), protocol (x402), identity (ERC-8004), and onramp/offramp. Stripe matches that span through Tempo (settlement), Privy (wallets), MPP + ACP (protocol), Bridge (routing), and SPTs (governance). Circle controls the monetary base layer: 98.6% of agent payments settle in their stablecoin. Google plays the standards layer with AP2 and A2A. MoonPay bet on open standards with OWS.

Three bets shaping the stack

The first bet is settlement rails. Coinbase's x402 argues the future is crypto-native HTTP payments on Base and Solana. Stripe's MPP argues agents need multi-rail access settling on Tempo. These are not mutually exclusive, but they represent different visions of where value accrues.

The second bet is identity and authorization. Google's AP2 mandates, Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol, ERC-8004's on-chain registries, and Skyfire's KYA all compete to answer "should this agent be trusted to spend?" The winner captures the governance chokepoint.

The third bet is vertical versus horizontal. Coinbase and Stripe are building full stacks, while Skyfire, ATXP, and MoonPay bet that open standards and middleware layers will capture value between the giants.

The clearest near-term signal is consolidation. Five acquisitions exceeding $100M occurred in the past year. The convergence of traditional payments (Visa, Mastercard, Stripe) with crypto-native infrastructure (Coinbase, Circle, Cloudflare) is compressing timelines. The rails being laid today will determine who collects tolls on agentic commerce for the next decade.

---

About

The Agent Payments Stack is an independent research project mapping every company building infrastructure for AI agent payments. It is maintained by Jordan Lyall, CPO at Art Blocks and builder of mint.day.

This is not affiliated with or sponsored by any project listed. Inclusion is based on shipping product, not paying for placement.

---

Methodology

• Projects are included if they have shipped a product, protocol, or standard that directly enables AI agents to hold, move, or authorize money.
• Live means demonstrated transaction volume or production users. Early means product shipped but limited volume data. Announced means spec published or funding secured but no production deployment.
• Acquired projects are marked with the acquirer and deal value where public.
• Hackathon projects are listed separately as they represent prototypes, not production infrastructure.
• This landscape is updated as the space evolves. Suggest additions via the submit form.

---

Embed

Drop the stack into any blog post, Substack, or Notion page. No account needed.

---

Changelog