The duel of two major routes in AI entities' payments.

Written by: Zennon Kapron

Translated by: Chopper, Foresight News

As AI entities increasingly undertake various commercial transactions, a battle over the underlying payment channels has begun.

Currently, there are two mutually incompatible technical routes for achieving autonomous consumption by AI entities: when software programs make payments on behalf of users, through which channels will transactions ultimately be settled? One camp builds payment links based on tokenized bank card credentials controlled by Visa and Mastercard; the other is led by Coinbase, adopting stablecoins for settlement based on open internet protocols. The surface focus of AI entity e-commerce is shopping assistant applications, but the core game behind it is who can dominate the next generation of payment systems.

Two payment channels, tailored for different application scenarios

Traditional card organizations took the initiative and moved quickly. Mastercard launched its Agent Pay service in April 2025, which is built on its proprietary intelligent token system. This tokenization technology, originally used for contactless payments and fast payment scenarios linked to bank cards, has now expanded its functionality to allow verified AI entities to complete transactions within the user's authorized scope.

At the launch of this service, a number of industry partners were gathered, and its strategic intent was clear: partners include Microsoft's WatsonX intelligent orchestration platform, as well as payment service providers Braintree and Checkout.com. A day later, Visa also launched its Visa Intelligent Commerce service, opening its payment network to AI developers, with the core carrier being AI-adapted bank cards. This solution replaces the original card number with a tokenized credential to prove that the user has authorized a specified AI entity and defines the boundaries of transaction permissions. Visa also attracted several leading AI companies, with a partnership list that includes Anthropic, OpenAI, Perplexity, Mistral, and Samsung.

Both card organizations' solutions retain transactions within the traditional card payment models that have been in use for decades. AI entities are new roles, but the underlying operations still rely on traditional payment channels that have served global commerce for half a century.

The stablecoin camp, however, adopted a completely different architecture. Coinbase launched the x402 protocol in May 2025, reactivating the long-set-aside HTTP 402 "Payment Required" status code, allowing transactions to be settled directly on the internet using the USDC stablecoin. The specific process is: the client requests access to resources, and the server returns payment instructions; the client attaches signed stablecoin payment information to the request header; once the on-chain transaction is confirmed, the corresponding resource can be accessed normally. The entire process requires no account registration, bank card binding, and incurs no bank card transaction fees.

This solution is designed specifically for machine-to-machine transactions. AI entities may need to make thousands of small payments for accessing application programming interfaces (APIs), obtaining data streams, and interfacing with other entities. Such transactions would be cost-prohibitive if conducted through traditional bank card channels.

Both technical routes have their strengths. Bank card channels excel in personal retail consumption, where transaction chargebacks, fraud protection, and dispute arbitration mechanisms are required at very high levels; stablecoin channels, on the other hand, show significant advantages in high-frequency, low-value, cross-border machine transactions, while the fee structures and settlement timeliness of traditional bank cards would completely fail in such scenarios. The core of the competition between the two sides is to see which scenario will become mainstream for AI entity commercial transactions.

A major challenge faced by both routes is identity verification. When software programs initiate payments, merchants need to confirm that the operator is a legitimate entity authorized by a real user, and not a malicious robot using stolen credentials; concurrently, users also need a mechanism to request a withdrawal after an AI entity mistakenly initiates a transaction.

Visa reported that AI access traffic on U.S. retail websites surged by 47 times, prompting it to collaborate with cloud service provider Cloudflare to launch a trusted agent protocol to distinguish between legitimate AI programs and malicious crawlers. This also represents a structural advantage of traditional card organizations: with a risk control scoring system, chargeback rules, and dispute handling mechanisms accumulated over fifty years, they are well-suited to address issues like AI entities purchasing the wrong products. However, once stablecoin transactions go on-chain, they are permanently effective and cannot be rolled back; currently, there is no corresponding solution within the native system.

In the future, the key deciding factor for the personal market's direction may not be which payment channel has lower fees, but rather who can solve the challenges of AI identity verification and transaction dispute handling.

Card organization’s dual-line layout, fully betting on both tracks

An intriguing signal is that Visa and Mastercard have not bet everything on their own channels but are simultaneously laying out stablecoin tracks.

As of April 2026, Visa’s stablecoin settlement business reaches an annual transaction volume of 7 billion U.S. dollars, with a quarter-on-quarter growth of 50%; the company added five public chain supports, and the total number of cooperating public chains has reached nine, while launching over 130 "stablecoin + bank card" linkage projects in more than 50 countries worldwide. In October 2025, Visa further ramped up its efforts, collaborating with Cloudflare to launch a trusted agent protocol to assist merchants in identifying legitimate entities from malicious programs, and also publicly announced a partnership with Coinbase to facilitate interconnectivity between its network and the x402 protocol. The seemingly competitive bank card systems and stablecoin protocols are now building a bridge for intercommunication.

Mastercard also adopted the same dual-line strategy. In March 2026, Mastercard announced it would invest up to 1.8 billion U.S. dollars to acquire stablecoin platform BVNK. Prior to that, its Agent Pay service had expanded to Latin America and the Caribbean, adapting to local issuing institutions by early 2026.

It is evident that the core thought of the two traditional card organizations is: no longer simply sticking to bank card channels, but striving to become the fee gateway for all payment links, whether through their own channels or stablecoin channels. This layout is enough to reflect their judgment: if the industry ultimately settles on bank cards as the mainstream for AI payments, they would not need to invest heavily in acquiring stablecoin-related infrastructure.

Differentiated application scenarios

From the products currently launched, the application boundaries of the two technical routes are quite clear.

Mainstream products aimed at ordinary consumers mostly choose bank card channels. The "one-click settlement" feature launched by ChatGPT in September 2025, co-developed by OpenAI and payment service provider Stripe, relies on shared payment tokens to complete bank card settlement. This token is limited to specified merchants and shopping orders, initially connecting with Etsy merchants, and later covering over one million Shopify stores. Amazon’s "agent ordering" feature can commission AI entities to purchase on third-party sites, automatically filling in the user's bound bank card at settlement.

Personal consumption-oriented AI shopping services generally choose bank cards because this system has mature anti-fraud tools, a comprehensive merchant collaboration network, and long-established user trust.

On the other hand, the stablecoin channel firmly occupies the machine transaction market. Amazon integrates the x402 protocol into its Bedrock AI entity's core payment service, relying on Coinbase's Base public chain for settlement, with a single transaction taking about 200 milliseconds, and fees under one cent; Stripe also acts as a payment access point for this service. According to Coinbase data, in the first year after the x402 protocol's launch, over 169 million payment orders were processed, covering 590,000 buyers and 100,000 sellers.

These transactions are not ordinary users shopping for clothes, but rather AI entities paying for services like computing power, data, and API calls, with transaction frequency and single transaction amounts completely opposite to the design logic of bank cards. In September 2025, Coinbase, together with Cloudflare, established the x402 Foundation to promote the co-creation of general standards in the industry rather than building closed proprietary products.

In summary, of the five benchmark AI commercial payment projects implemented by early 2026: three use bank card settlement and two use stablecoin settlement, with application scenarios clearly divided according to personal consumption and machine transactions.

The future direction of the industry

In the short term, the industry landscape in 2026 is likely to maintain the status quo: bank cards dominating personal retail payments, while stablecoins focus on machine-to-machine transactions, with both developing alongside each other. However, by 2030, this situation may change, as both camps are striving to seize the integration zones between the two types of scenarios.

The ultimate deciding factor will depend on whether AI-driven commercial transactions are inclined towards traditional retail forms or evolve into a vast network of small machine transactions. If it is the former, traditional card organizations will continue to hold the dominant position; if it is the latter, stablecoin channels will capture a significant amount of new transaction flow.

Visa and Mastercard have made the most prudent choice: a dual-line layout of both tracks, so no matter where future traffic flows, they can collect fees from it. The real concern should be those companies that only bet on a single payment channel. The two card organizations have long avoided this risk, which also clearly reflects their judgment about the industry’s future.