AI Agent Payments, 98% USDC Concentration Warning... "1.7 transactions processed in 1 year"

▲ Artificial Intelligence (AI), Stablecoins, Cryptocurrency Payments/AI-generated Image

AI agents have emerged as new players in the cryptocurrency payment market, processing 176 million transactions in just one year. However, with most payments concentrated in USDC, a warning has been issued that the autonomous payment ecosystem is becoming overly reliant on a single stablecoin.

According to Bitcoinist on May 25 (local time), cryptocurrency investment firm Keyrock, in a report co-authored with Coinbase and blockchain company Tempo, analyzed that over 98% of payments processed by AI agents in the past year were made with Circle's USDC. Keyrock researcher Ben Harvey pointed out that relying on a single issuer's infrastructure, regulatory status, and reserve management creates systemic risks that have not been sufficiently discussed in the industry.

Harvey stated, "In just one year, machine payments have evolved from a conceptual stage into a real ecosystem, with agents settling 176 million transactions." According to the report, from May 2025 to April 2026, AI agents settled over $70 million through 176 million transactions. The average transaction size was approximately $0.31.

Bitcoinist pointed out that these figures demonstrate why existing payment networks are not suitable for AI agent payments. In card payment networks, standard processing fees amount to approximately $0.30 per transaction, making payments under $1 uneconomical. For example, a transaction where an agent pays $0.03 for a weather API call is difficult to process through consumer card payment networks like Visa.

Stablecoins filled this gap. While traditional payment infrastructure struggles with fixed fee burdens on microtransactions, cryptocurrency payment networks have emerged as a suitable alternative for AI agent payments because they lack a fixed fee structure that would erode the entire value of small transactions. As of the end of Q1 2026, over 104,000 AI agents were registered in more than 15 directories and registries worldwide.

The report explained that AI agents are already being utilized for building Web3 applications, launching tokens, trading, and autonomous interaction with protocols and services. It also stated that existing companies have invested over $8 billion in acquisitions to preemptively capture the new payment stack forming around autonomous software users. In a survey conducted by CoinGecko in April targeting 2,632 cryptocurrency users, 87% of respondents stated they would be willing to entrust AI agents with managing at least 10% of their cryptocurrency portfolio. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire predicted that within the next five years, billions of agents will operate using stablecoins on behalf of users.

*Disclaimer: This article is for investment reference only and we are not responsible for any investment losses based on it. The content should be interpreted for informational purposes only.*