USDC Sees New Use Case in AI Agent Economy, Enables Micropayments

Circle, the company behind the popular stablecoin USDC, is exploring new use cases for its digital dollar. In an interview, Circle CEO Heath Tarbert discussed how USDC could be used as a form of programmable money in an AI agent economy.

Tarbert envisions a future where autonomous AI agents can make micropayments to each other using USDC, with transactions as small as one ten-thousandth of a cent ($0.000001). This would allow for high-frequency payments between software agents, potentially unlocking new opportunities for agent-to-agent commerce.

Circle is already working on infrastructure to support this scenario through its Nanopayments system, launched in May as part of the Circle Agent Stack.