Circle CEO Says AI Agents Use USDC for 99% of Payments
- USDC settled 99.3% of x402 AI agent payment volume during Q2 2026.
- Circle’s USDC circulation reached $73.3 billion by the end of Q2 2026.
- Circle is expanding USDC use across AI agents, retail, and global payments.
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said USDC accounted for 99.3% of payment volume processed through the x402 protocol during the second quarter of 2026.
The figure highlights growing use of stablecoins in automated machine-to-machine commerce. However, the statistic specifically covers x402 activity and does not represent the entire AI payments market.
USDC Gains Ground in AI Agent Payments
Allaire discussed the opportunity during Circle’s Aug. 19 earnings AMA. He said AI agents require reliable settlement assets that support fast, inexpensive, and predictable transactions.
The x402 protocol enables autonomous software agents to pay for digital services without requiring continuous human approval. Consequently, agents can purchase data, computing resources, application access, and digital content automatically.
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