Coinbase Unveils Agentic Finance Vision for AI-Powered Transactions

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has outlined a vision for 'Agentic Finance,' where AI agents pay for services autonomously using USDC and the x402 protocol.

The concept, named AiFi, aims to enable software that acts on its own to transact without requiring human intervention or verified identity.

x402 is a payment protocol developed by Coinbase that reuses the HTTP status code 402 'Payment Required' to facilitate real-time payments between AI agents and services.

In nine months, x402 has processed over 100 million machine-to-machine transactions on the Base network, with a notable growth rate of 3.1 million operations worth $1.2 million in May 2026 alone.