Visa report: AI agents for payments have entered a practical stage, and stablecoins are more suitable for high-frequency, small-ticket payments

Golden Finance reported on July 16 that Visa and Artemis jointly released a research report titled “Agentic Payments from the Ground Up,” noting that AI agent payments are moving from theory into real commercial scenarios. It is divided into two types: macro-commerce and micro-commerce. Macro-commerce refers to agents acting on behalf of humans to complete purchases such as booking and subscriptions, similar to traditional e-commerce. Micro-commerce refers to high-frequency, small payments between software systems, typically below $1.

The report analyzes two machine-native payment protocols: x402, which has handled about $150 million in adjusted transaction volume since launching in May 2025, covering 109.6 million transactions, mainly concentrated on Base, Solana, and Polygon; and MPP, built by Stripe and Tempo, which has settled about $25k since going live in mid-March 2026, involving roughly 115k transactions. The average payment amount for both protocols is only a few cents, while traditional credit cards charge fixed fees per transaction that are far higher, making them unable to support such small-payment scenarios.

In terms of settlement methods, card payments are suitable for macro-commerce scenarios, while stablecoins are better for micro-commerce small payments. The report believes the future trend is the integration of the two approaches rather than choosing one over the other. A key challenge for AI agent payments is accountability—when an agent makes a mistake, it is unclear who should be responsible, and existing legal frameworks have not yet covered such scenarios.