AI Agent Payments on Base Top 138 Million, Chainalysis Finds

By Amara Osei

Cumulative payments through the x402 protocol on Base, the Coinbase-incubated blockchain, passed 138 million by the third quarter of 2026 — up from roughly 1,500 in mid-2025. That figure comes from a new report by blockchain analytics platform Chainalysis, which tracked the rise of agentic commerce: AI agents carrying out internet transactions on their own, funded with crypto and paying for services without human approval.

The mechanics are simple. A developer funds a bot's wallet with stablecoins — typically Circle's dollar-pegged USDC — and the bot spends as it works. It can pay for live web data, rent computing power, ask a more capable AI model for help, or run an automated tool to check code for security flaws. No person signs off on each purchase.

More than 87% of these payments were for less than 10 cents, per the report. At those amounts, credit card processing fees can exceed the cost of the service itself. That pricing mismatch makes blockchains the natural rail for bots buying in tiny increments, according to Eric Jardine, head of research at Chainalysis.

"You have this perfect combination of speed plus low cost to settle, and that's the sort of thing that you would need if you were doing true AI-to-AI commerce," Jardine told Fortune.

Why did x402 scale so fast?

Coinbase introduced x402 in May 2025 and later partnered with cloud security firm Cloudflare to support its development. In July, the protocol's foundation launched under the Linux Foundation with 40 members — including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and Google — extending its backing well beyond the crypto industry.

Chainalysis centered its research on x402 because the protocol was purpose-built for agent-to-agent commerce. Over the past year, agentic commerce's use cases have spanned online shopping, travel booking and payments settlement. Consumers and businesses are handing AI systems not just tasks but spending decisions, and crypto companies have played a key role in pushing the trend in the United States.

How quickly do bots start spending?

Much faster than they used to. The median time between a wallet receiving its first deposit and making its first payment fell from 73 days in late 2025 to 18 minutes by Q3 2026. Roughly two-thirds of new wallets now spend within an hour of receiving funds.

Repeat funding has climbed too. Around 90% of qualifying active wallets received another deposit within 30 days, up from roughly 71% a year earlier. The pattern suggests developers are funding ongoing tasks rather than running one-off experiments.

What happens next?

Jardine expects the bot-driven economy to keep expanding as more online platforms accept payments from AI agents.

"I would hazard that the trend is likely to be exponential," Jardine said. "As activity increases, there's network effects, and those network effects tend to act like magnets for more activity."

If that compounding holds, the 138 million figure won't stay a milestone for long — and payment networks on both sides of the crypto divide, from Visa to Stripe, have already placed bets on the protocol driving it.