TechFlow news, July 16, according to Visa's official website, Visa and Artemis jointly released a report based on real-time on-chain data, providing an in-depth analysis of the current status and trends of AI agent payments. The report points out that AI agent payments are divided into two categories: first, agents replacing users to complete ticket booking, subscriptions, etc., known as "macro-commerce," similar to traditional e-commerce payments; second, high-frequency small-value API calls between software, etc., known as "micro-commerce," with single transaction amounts usually less than 1 cent.
On-chain data shows that the open protocol x402, incubated by Coinbase and Cloudflare and now hosted by the Linux Foundation, has processed approximately 109 million transactions since going live in May 2025, with adjusted transaction volume of about $15 million, mainly active on Base, Solana, and Polygon chains; the Machine Payment Protocol (MPP), jointly built by Stripe and Tempo with contributions from Visa, went live in mid-March 2026 and completed approximately 115,000 transactions within weeks, with a settlement amount of about $25,000.
The report points out that blockchain settlement costs have dropped to extremely low levels, making small-value payments in the range of 1 cent to 1 dollar economically feasible for the first time, but agent payments still face significant challenges at the legal and regulatory level regarding trust, liability attribution, and dispute resolution. Visa stated that its goal is to build a unified infrastructure that supports both card-native trust authorization and machine-native settlement, promoting the continuous integration of the two systems.
