Keyrock, together with Coinbase and Tempo, jointly released a report stating that over the past 12 months, AI agent payments have evolved from a concept to a mature ecosystem, with settlement amounts reaching $73 million and 176 million transactions from May 2025 to April 2026. By the end of the first quarter of this year, more than 104k AI agents had registered in over 15 directories and registries, with an average transaction size of about $0.31. The report states that traditional payment networks struggle to support small transactions below $1 due to fixed fees, making stablecoins almost the default settlement layer for machine commerce; among AI agent settlements, over 98% use Circle's USDC. However, the report believes this also creates dependency on a single stablecoin issuer, with associated risks related to reserve management, regulatory status, and technological infrastructure. (Cointelegraph)