Payment volumes for AI agents are reported to be more than 90% below expectations. However, significant investments are being made in the infrastructure surrounding these transactions, indicating a trend towards greater adoption.
AI agents are gradually starting to make purchases, although the figures vary significantly. Noah Levine, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, mentioned in a recent X post that contrary to a Bloomberg report stating that AI agents processed $24 million in transactions in 30 days, the actual figure from Allium Labs is estimated to be around $3 million, with true transactions likely amounting to $1.6 million after filtering out duplicates.
“The gap tells you how early-stage even the measurement infrastructure is.”
“L’écart vous dit à quel point l’infrastructure de mesure est encore à ses débuts.”
Most current payment activities are linked to developer tools. For instance, Firecrawl provides web scraping services for 1 cent per query, while Browserbase markets its AI-oriented sessions and Freepik offers AI-generated images. Most businesses are processing transactions through traditional payment methods, but x402 allows developers or agents a trial without a full subscription commitment.
x402 is a straightforward payment protocol from Coinbase that enables AI agents to conduct transactions online.
Growth in Protocol Adoption
Levine noted that multiple significant payment and internet companies, including Stripe and Google, are incorporating the x402 protocol into their systems, suggesting confidence in the technology.
He remarked that the $1.6 million in current payments may be modest but paves the way for future infrastructure:
“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.”
“Aucun d’entre eux ne parie sur 1,6 million de dollars par mois. Ils parient sur ce que ce chiffre pourrait être lorsque des agents deviennent les acheteurs par défaut.”
Coinbase Expands x402 Facilitator to Polygon
Coinbase has revealed it is supporting the Ethereum layer-2 network Polygon, allowing developers to accept USDC payments via Polygon, Base, and Solana, essential for making automatic transactions efficient.
Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, pointed out that there will soon be more AI agents participating in transactions than humans. Read more about what Alchemy is doing in this space.
