Base MCP: Next stop, Agent paid for the "appliance layer" battlefield

Yesterday, Base officially released Base MCP. By linking Base Account to AI Agent by Base MCP, you can use an oral expression to enable Agent to perform Swap, transfer, warehouse tracking, query transaction history, like chat。

The players familiar with Base know that the main line in the Base chain is now AI, so Base has this update that doesn't surprise the players. There are even players who expect to have a new game on the Base chain, like the previous AI Meme $SHIT, where Agent was added to the chain directly by the Base MCP。

But if we pull it out from the angle of the chain, from the point of view of the competition that Agent to Agent pays, perhaps there is a new answer to why AI became Base's main line。

Rapidly evolving Agent Payments

Turn back time to September 2024. At the time, in order for AI Agent to pay a fee, there was basically only one option for humans: to let AI Agent simulate human action by using browser automation tools (e.g. Playwright, Selenium, etc.) and to complete the closing process on the web page。

This is the only option and is not safe because of the need to provide payment vouchers (e.g. full credit card/debit card number, CVVV, validity period, etc.) to AI Agent。

By May 2025, Coinbase had launched x402, provided AI Agent with an encrypted wallet and solved the problem in an encrypted original. But being aware that this is a potential market is not the only way to solve it, it is not the only way to encrypt it. In 2025, Google launched AP2 to allow users to delegate consumption privileges to Agent. Visa has expanded its existing bank card payment channels by introducing Visa Inteligent Company, which does not give Agent credit card numbers, CVVs, etc. sensitive information, but rather provides Agent with specific, restricted tokens to complete the payment。

Today, x402 has processed 176 million transactions from AI Agents with a total value of over $7 million. This amount seems to be small, but neither Coinbase nor the traditional giants are underestimating the competition for this new form of payment:

- On 22 January 2026, the sixth-largest bank in the United States, with $47 billion in assets, $33 billion in deposits, and Capital One, the third largest credit card issuer in the United States, announced a $5.55 billion acquisition of Brex to raise AI's capacity to pay。

- IN MARCH 2026, MASTERCARD PURCHASED THE STABILIZATION CURRENCY INFRASTRUCTURE COMPANY BVNK AT $1.8 BILLION。

- In February 2025, Stripe bought a stable currency payment platform for $1.1 billion, Bridge。

Although they did not make it clear that the acquisition of a stable currency-related business was in response to the coming age of Agent payments. But the stabilization currency is really vital to Agent's payment。

Why is the stabilizer important for Agent's payment

According to Keyrock data, to date, the median value of Agent transactions processed on x402 ranged from 0.01 to $0.10, of which 76 per cent were transactions under $0.30。

US$ 0.30, which is the most common fixed fee in the United States and most mainstream markets. It's like a wall, making micropayments of less than $1 very uneconomical. For example, a three-cent API call, $0.3 is 10 times the call fee, and if Agent pays it with a credit card, it's going to be too expensive to accumulate。

The block chain is a good solution. On Base, the transaction settlement cost is US$0.0001. With this enormous advantage, the stabilization currency has almost naturally won the competition in Agent payments against the traditional payment giant。

Of the 176 million Agent transactions processed by x402, 98.6 per cent were settled by USDC. Given the close relationship between Coinbase and Circle, it can be said that Coinbase is also a big winner in the settlement。

But the settlement level is just one layer of Agent's payment. Coinbase has an opponent -- Stripe。

Challenges from Stripe

In March of this year, Stripe launched the Agent Payment Protocol MPP, which makes Stripe's schedule of payments by Agent very different from Coinbase。

- Coinbase has Base, Stripe has Tempo

- From the wallet floor, Coinbase has Agent Wallet, Stripe has Privy

- From the route level, Coinbase has built the associated route facility, Stripe has bought Bridge for $1.1 billion

- From the payment agreement, Coinbase has x 402, Stripe has MPP

Now we go back to Base MCP, which was mentioned at the beginning of the article. Now that the two warring families have more than four floors of support, the next battle is the application level。

That is why AI can be the heart of the Base main line - Base ensures that AI (at least in the encrypted currency area) is on Base, not actually providing an angle for the Base chain degen, but rather widening the scene where Agent pays, allowing more Agent to trade more for more applications, thereby ensuring that he is in the lead on the Agent payment track。

When the size advantage of the hierarchy takes shape, and the future Agent payments go into business, Coinbase is better off winning。

From this perspective, the roll-out of Base MCP can be seen as a small step in Coinbase's big ambition。