Coinbase adds AI agent & USDT payments for merchants

Coinbase has expanded the payments suite in Coinbase Business, adding support for payments from AI agents and broadening merchants' payment options.

Coinbase Business now serves more than 5,000 companies, while its payment links, checkouts and invoices have processed more than 100,000 payments across sectors including AI startups, auction houses, law firms and nonprofits.

A central part of the update is support for payments from AI agents through x402, which Coinbase described as an open standard for machine-to-machine payments. Businesses using Coinbase checkout tools can accept these transactions through the same checkout flow they already use.

Payments made by AI agents settle in USDC and are deposited into the merchant's Coinbase Business account. Coinbase framed the change as a response to the growing share of internet transactions carried out by software agents, whether for digital services, shopping tasks or other autonomous activity.

The update also adds USDT across the full Coinbase Business payments suite. Merchants can now accept USDT through payment links, checkouts and invoices, with Coinbase converting those funds and settling them in USDC in the business account.

Another addition is reusable payment links, which let merchants create a single link and use it repeatedly instead of generating a new one for each customer. Businesses can share the links by email, text or QR code, and can set payment limits, pause the links or disable them.

Pricing tools

Coinbase has also introduced flexible pricing options. Merchants can set minimum or maximum payment amounts, or leave the amount open, for donations, tips or work where the final charge varies.

It has also added a product catalogue feature that lets businesses enter product information once and reuse it across links, checkouts and invoices, reducing repeated data entry across payment formats.

Buyer information collection is now integrated into the payment flow. Businesses can collect details such as name, email address and shipping address at the same time as payment, giving merchants the information needed for fulfilment.

Coinbase's broader pitch is that crypto payment tools can reduce some of the frictions associated with conventional card-based systems. It said funds settle instantly in USDC and highlighted lower fees than credit cards, as well as the absence of chargebacks, though it did not disclose specific fee levels in the announcement.

Merchant push

The latest changes show Coinbase continuing to build out business-facing services beyond its core retail trading operations. Crypto groups have been seeking more routine commercial use for stablecoins, particularly in payments and cross-border transactions, as they try to tie digital assets more closely to everyday business processes.

Stablecoins sit at the centre of this strategy. USDC, the token in which Coinbase settles these business payments, is designed to track the US dollar and is widely used in crypto markets to move funds without the price swings seen in other tokens. USDT, now supported across the suite, is the largest stablecoin by market capitalisation and trading volume.

The inclusion of AI agent payments also reflects a wider effort in the technology sector to prepare payment systems for software-driven commerce. If AI agents increasingly make purchases on behalf of users or services, payment providers will need systems that can verify, route and settle transactions without direct human interaction at the point of sale.

For Coinbase, the aim is to make its checkout and invoicing tools broad enough to handle both traditional crypto users and newer forms of automated buyers. By combining payment acceptance, product listings and customer data collection in one system, it is trying to make its business offering more useful to merchants that may not want to build separate workflows.