Report: The crypto payment track is becoming the default settlement layer for AI Agents, with USDC accounting for 98.6%

Deep Tide TechFlow News, May 24, according to CoinDesk, the crypto trading firm Keyrock released a report indicating that between May 2025 and April 2026, AI Agents completed over 176 million transactions on the blockchain, with settlement amounts exceeding $73 million. Since 76% of Agent transaction amounts are below the fixed fee threshold of $0.30 for traditional card payments, and blockchain settlement costs are only a fraction of a cent, crypto payment tracks are becoming the preferred infrastructure for micro-payments between machines.

Currently, 98.6% of machine payments are settled in USDC, highlighting Circle's core position in the crypto payment field, but also bringing concentration risk from a single issuer. Coinbase, Stripe, Google, and Visa have each launched their own machine-to-machine payment systems, accelerating the competitive landscape.

In terms of market size forecasts, Gartner predicts that AI Agents will mediate $15 trillion in transactions by 2028, while McKinsey estimates that the Agent commerce scale in retail will reach $3 trillion to $5 trillion by 2030. Keyrock states that the pace of infrastructure deployment indicates that this market is emerging from the experimental stage.

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