Fortune reported on 14 October that Chainalysis has published a study of agentic commerce, where AI agents buy online without a person approving each purchase. By the third quarter of 2026, x402 payments on Coinbase's Base blockchain had added up to more than 138 million, from about 1,500 in mid-2025. x402 is a protocol that lets bots pay for online services in crypto. More than 87% of the payments were under 10 cents, per the report.
Fortune describes the flow this way. A developer puts stablecoins, usually Circle's USDC, in a bot's wallet. The bot then pays for data, AI help or code checks as it works. Fortune says card processing fees can exceed the price of such small services. Chainalysis's Eric Jardine said blockchains pair speed with low settlement cost, which AI-to-AI commerce needs. The typical wallet now makes its first payment 18 minutes after its first deposit. In late 2025 that gap was 73 days. About 90% of qualifying active wallets got another deposit within 30 days, against roughly 71% a year earlier. Fortune gave no total dollar value.
This is our reading, not a Chainalysis finding. Fast first spending and regular top-ups point to standing budgets rather than one-off tests. If so, a service owner may gain customers that pay per request. That raises questions about per-request pricing, spending limits and how each agent's spending is watched.