The AI agents payment announcement snuck up on a lot of people. Stripe has quietly enabled AI agents to hold USDC balances and make direct, instant micro-payments on the Base blockchain.
No human in the loop. The agents can now initiate, authorize, and settle transactions completely autonomously.
The flow:
1/ Create a PaymentIntent
2/ Stripe generates a unique deposit address per transaction
3/ Return the address to an agent and instruct it to send funds or a payment token
4/ Track transaction status via API, webhook, or Dashboard
5/ Funds settle in your default balance pic.twitter.com/txX5nGMrtX— Jeff Weinstein (@jeff_weinstein) February 10, 2026
What this actually changes
Until now, AI agents could chat, plan, analyze, and even negotiate deals, but the moment real money needed to move, a human had to step in. That bottleneck is gone.
An AI agent can now monitor your subscriptions and renew them automatically, book travel and pay for it and handle refunds, run small freelance tasks and get paid in USDC without you touching anything, and manage micro-payments in games, content platforms, or DeFi protocols at scale.
Because it’s on Base (fast and cheap) and uses USDC (stable and regulated), the economics suddenly make sense even for tiny transactions.
The infrastructure is already being built
This move from Stripe comes right after Coinbase introduced infrastructure for “agentic wallets”.
These are crypto wallets that can be controlled by AI agents rather than human hands. It sounds sci-fi, but it’s real.
Source: Coinbase
That combination increases efficiency but also complexity. It blurs the line between financial automation and autonomous action.
For institutional players, this changes the risk calculus. When AI agents can execute transactions directly, compliance becomes about monitoring automated systems, not just human behavior.
For retail users, AI-controlled payment systems could offer advantages like automated execution strategies, smarter spending optimization, and faster responses to subscription changes or billing errors.
But automation compresses risk. If an AI agent misinterprets data or executes under flawed parameters, the consequences happen onchain, immediately. This is a real concern.
Why this feels like a genuine step forward
This is not another “AI will change everything” headline. It’s working infrastructure from one of the biggest payment companies on the planet.
When Stripe turns on a feature like this, it usually means the rest of the industry follows quickly.
Right now, this is one of those moments where the future stops feeling distant.
The machine economy, where software doesn’t just help humans, but actually participates as an economic actor, just got its first real on-ramp.
The pieces are falling into place faster than most expected. And Stripe connected the last obvious missing link.
Crypto market researcher and external contributor at Kriptoworld
Wheel. Steam engine. Bitcoin.
📅 Published: February 15, 2026 • 🕓 Last updated: February 15, 2026
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