Stablecoins on the rise: Bernstein sees a boom in AI payments

• Bernstein sees long-term potential for stablecoins from the rise of AI-driven payments
• Payments between software agents could be processed automatically
• Initial volumes are small, but large platforms such as Stripe or Google already support the infrastructure

The US financial and investment research firm Bernstein published a note on stablecoins on March 23, 2026, which highlighted possible developments and potential in the area of ​​AI-driven payments.

Stablecoins on the rise thanks to AI payments

Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies whose value is linked to stable assets such as the US dollar, euro or gold. In contrast to classic cryptocurrencies, stablecoins retain a largely stable value and enable fast, uncomplicated cross-border payments.

As CoinMarketCap reported, citing Bernstein’s note, stablecoins could benefit in the long term from the increase in AI-controlled payments – even if the initial usage figures are still moderate. Bernstein therefore sees the potential in stablecoins to make microtransactions economically possible and to automatically process programmable payments between software agents, it goes on to say.

The transaction volumes achieved so far are still low: Stripe and Tempo, for example, reported around $5,000 in the first week and Coinbase’s x402 protocol reported around $24 million in 30 days, as CoinMarketCap reports with reference to Bernstein data.

Infrastructure more important than initial numbers

Noah Levine from venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (A16z) pointed out in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on March 11, 2026 that the actual payment activity of AI agents was only $1.6 million.

https://t.co/JveAtr9p4f

– Noah Levine (@nlevine19) March 11, 2026

According to Levine, the infrastructure built around the x402 protocol is much more important, and the protocol is already integrated into Stripe, Cloudflare, Vercel and Google’s agent payment framework. In doing so, Levine puts the $24 million previously mentioned by Bloomberg into perspective and made it clear that the potential of the x402 protocol lies primarily in the payment infrastructure that has been set up and not in the initially manageable volumes.

AI payments could give momentum

According to Bernstein, although AI payments are not the focus of the stablecoin market, they could bring additional growth in the future, while demand has so far been driven primarily by traditional applications such as international payments, transfers, card-based products and neobanking, reports CoinMarketCap. It goes on to say that overall payment volume increased accordingly from $213 billion in 2024 to $375 billion in 2025, primarily through consumer-to-consumer transactions, but activity also continued to grow in the B2C, B2B and C2B sectors.

USDC dominates AI payments

According to Bernstein data, Coinbase and Circle, along with USDC, are central players in the stablecoin market, and thanks to high liquidity and clear regulatory frameworks, USDC could take over the largest share of AI payments in the future, CoinMarketCap continues. By early 2026, an adjusted transaction volume worth $2.4 trillion had already been processed via USDC – significantly more than Tether’s (USDT) $1.4 trillion.

Svenja Polonyi, editorial team at finanzen.net

This text is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an investment recommendation. finanzen.net GmbH excludes any claims for recourse.

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