The AI Agent has acquired the ability to "spend money".

Jessy, Golden Finance

On September 16, Google and Coinbase teamed up to launch the Agentic Payments Protocol (AP2), in conjunction with the X402 stablecoin payment track. This move gives AI Agents real payment capabilities. In other words, AI is no longer just able to converse or execute tasks; it can now “spend money.” At this moment, the machine economy is moving from imagination to reality.

The curtain rises on the machine economy

In August 2024, Coinbase was the first to complete a historic experiment: an AI robot used cryptocurrency to purchase tokens from another AI robot. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong publicly announced on X at the time that this was a completely AI-initiated and completed cryptocurrency transaction, with no human intervention.

The key infrastructure behind this is Coinbase's MPC wallet. It allows AI agents to directly generate and hold wallet addresses, using stablecoins like USDC for on-chain payments. Since AI cannot open accounts within the banking system, the MPC wallet becomes the key for them to enter the economic system.

Coinbase has since been pushing the boundaries of AI payments. They showcased a demo of AI making direct cryptocurrency payments to humans, launched the CDP AI Builder program supporting AI Agent integrated wallets, and collaborated with startups like Skyfire to explore the application scenarios of AI in autonomous procurement, labor settlement, and cross-border payments. The logic is very clear: if AI wants to perform economic actions in the real world, it must first learn to trade, and blockchain and stablecoins provide the ideal infrastructure.

Coinbase's attempt has proven its feasibility, but Google's involvement means that this direction is being embraced by mainstream tech companies.

Relying on Google Cloud's Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol, AI on different platforms has been able to communicate and collaborate. The newly released AP2 protocol and X402 payment track enable AI agents to have true payment functionality for the first time. Agents can not only propose solutions but also autonomously complete settlements, with the entire process requiring no human intervention.

In the demonstration with Lowe’s Innovation Lab, the AI Agent completed a full shopping experience: diagnosing needs, recommending products, confirming orders, paying with USDC, and triggering fulfillment. There was no input of bank card information, nor was there any manual order placement; as natural persons, humans merely issued commands and expressed confirmations, and the transactions on the blockchain were ultimately completed.

Google's identity makes this progress significant. This is not a blockchain startup conducting fringe experiments, but rather the world's largest cloud services and AI infrastructure giant directly driving the standardization of AI Agent payments.

The natural synergy between blockchain and AI agents

The core feature of AI Agents is autonomous decision-making and automatic execution. However, if they cannot complete transactions, their role in the economic system remains limited. The payment process is the key to transforming “agents” into “economies.”

Blockchain and stablecoins provide the foundation for all of this. First, they eliminate the barriers to opening accounts. AI cannot open a bank account, but it can generate a wallet address in seconds. Second, on-chain payments settle in real-time, with funds able to arrive in seconds without waiting for complex clearing processes. Finally, the cost of blockchain payments is low enough to support micropayments of a few cents or even smaller amounts.

This means that AI Agents can truly be implemented in various scenarios. For example, research agents can automatically pay for access to databases and instantly generate reports; code review agents can charge a few cents based on the number of bugs found; customer service agents can instantly call on translation agents and pay for their services; procurement agents in manufacturing can even automatically place orders and complete cross-border settlements.

This is not just a functional complement, but the beginning of a machine economy. Thousands of AI Agents will exist as economic agents, with blockchain providing them payment, identity, and property rights protection, and the transactions among them will form a new micro-economy.

As the tasks undertaken by AI Agents become increasingly complex, from cross-platform collaboration to automated fulfillment, seamless payments will become a core driving force. For developers, this means a whole new economic experiment ground. They can create services run by Agents, explore “pay-as-you-go” business models, and build microeconomic systems completely driven by Agents.

For the blockchain industry, this provides the most direct landing scenario for “crypto-native AI”. Blockchain provides the foundation for transactions and property rights for AI, while AI provides real application demands for blockchain. The combination of the two may become a growth point in the next round of the technological cycle.

As emphasized by Google and Coinbase in their announcement, payments are just the beginning. As AI Agents increasingly enter autonomous workflows, transactions will not just be an ancillary aspect but will become the core of the machine economy.