Skeptic to Believer: How AI Agents and Stablecoins Are Powering the Future of Consumer Payments
From shopping bots to real-time travel deals, intelligent payments are here, and they’re modular, secure, and adaptive.
Until fairly recently, I was skeptical about stablecoins.
I’m generally an early adopter, but I’ve been reluctant to embrace the idea that stablecoins were anything other than yet another cryptocurrency fad, let alone the next frontier of payments. I like to think I came by this hesitance honestly: working in and observing the ecommerce space where most crypto ecommerce use cases were at best little more than another option and most often seemed like a stretch.
But then something changed my mind. Agentic AI.
The convergence of stablecoins and agentic AI is about to redefine what digital payments can do, transforming them from static settlement instruments into intelligent, adaptive financial agents that create real value for everyday consumers. Think about what it means to have autonomous transactions that still respect your boundaries. No one wants AI agents to go rogue, but you do want them to act on your behalf with precision and control. Stablecoins can do both.
The Rapid Rise of Stablecoins
Typically pegged 1:1 to fiat like USD, stablecoins are in many ways the opposite of Bitcoin, Ethereum and other blockchain-based cryptocurrencies. Not only are they built for stability, typically holding a consistent value, they’ve also already demonstrated their staying power as a digital alternative to fiat, with a massive $7.3 trillion in adjusted transaction volume over the past year, according to Visa’s Onchain Analytics Dashboard. That’s not small potatoes— Visa itself processed about $16 trillion in payments in 2024, and PayPal saw $1.68 trillion. They’ve found a real footing for remittances, FX, trading, DeFi, lending and liquidity. These numbers show that stablecoins are no longer a fringe experiment. They’re part of a growing digital financial network.
Further proof of this momentum is the recent announcement by Shopify adding USDC support for its merchants along with guidance that they will incentivize its use with up to 0.5% cash back for merchants and an unspecified cash back payment for customers who use the payment method.
Why have they done this, and what does this signal? In this instance, the best explanation is an example:
Example: The AI Shopping Assistant
Imagine an AI shopping assistant embedded in your favorite ecommerce app. You give it a specific objective and a clear budget—something like “find me the best deal on a weekend getaway under $800”—and let it negotiate and transact for you. But you wouldn’t hand it your main credit card. Instead, you’d use a temporary virtual card, like those offered by Stripe or other composable payment platforms, funded with fiat and converted to stablecoins. The agent can find deals across platforms, but if it goes over budget or tries to buy something sketchy, it’s instantly blocked.
It’s this kind of use case that shows up time and again, that converted me from skeptic to advocate, when it comes to stablecoins.
Platforms like Stripe are already piloting programmable payments and modular virtual cards, while Circle and Bakkt are exploring stablecoin-based loyalty and rewards systems. The signals are clear: real-world pilots are already underway, and the move from speculative hype to viable option has opened the door to significant and real opportunity for those paying attention.
From Static to Dynamic: The Convergence of Stablecoins and Agentic AI
Stablecoins—like USDC, USDT, and emerging models such as DAI—are digital currencies pegged to stable assets. Where their cousin Bitcoin can be volatile and speculative, stablecoins have emerged as a reliable infrastructure upon which companies can build. They’ve become the backbone of crypto markets and a key tool for hedging volatility. Yet, for many ecommerce and enterprise leaders, they’ve seemed limited to a niche: crypto-native payments that quickly convert to fiat.
Agentic AI is changing that narrative. Autonomous digital agents capable of shopping, negotiating, and orchestrating transactions in real time and paired with large language models (LLMs) that can analyze data, turns agents into intelligent intermediaries. They’re designed to optimize processes, like finding the best price, executing trades at the optimal time, and managing cross-border complexities without human intervention.
By connecting AI agents with modular payment APIs and stablecoin rails, composable orchestration layers allow real-time data flows and decision-making, like LEGO blocks snapping together. Composable APIs ensure that every payment an AI agent makes is auditable and reversible, providing the balance between innovation and control needed for agentic shopping to truly succeed.
Stablecoins in Action: Real B2C Use Cases
Once seen as a niche tool for crypto traders, stablecoins are now powering a range of real-world applications. Their speed, low cost, and programmable nature make them well-suited for both consumer experiences and behind-the-scenes transactions. Here’s where they’re showing up:
- Remittances: Families using stablecoins for faster, cheaper cross-border money transfers.
- Travel and Lifestyle Purchases: AI-driven shopping for travel deals and real-time dynamic pricing.
- Loyalty & Rewards: Real-time, interoperable loyalty points that can be spent across different platforms.
- Trading and Savings: Consumers hedging inflation or volatility using stablecoin-backed savings products
- Agent-to-Agent Interactions: Agents able to purchase capacity from one another using defined stablecoin budgets. For example, Fetch.ai has developed autonomous agents that manage transport logistics and energy grid optimization.
These are just some of the early use cases; stablecoin usage is going to proliferate in the next few years. The transaction volumes cited by Visa and PayPal make it clear they’ve already evolved from a speculative bet mostly for crypto enthusiasts, into a vital pillar of the digital finance ecosystem. In fact, they’re poised to become the financial backbone of a new digital economy.
The Power of Composable Infrastructure
I touched on it earlier, but it’s worth digging into: the last piece of the puzzle is composability. By treating digital commerce as modular—like LEGO blocks that can be reconfigured on demand—companies can plug in stablecoins, AI agents, and smart contracts without starting from scratch. Composable commerce platforms, built on microservices and headless APIs, ensure you can adapt quickly as new tools emerge, unlocking a seamless, dynamic shopping experience for your customers.
That same modular mindset applies to payments. Composable platforms from leaders like Stripe and Adyen let you use only the services that make sense for your business, whether that’s tokenized checkout, embedded wallets, or real-time settlement. Standards like x402 and frameworks from crypto-native players like Coinbase’s AgentKit are starting to shape how agent-to-agent payments will work, offering a more interoperable and programmable foundation.
This modular approach enables guardrails and safe experimentation, meaning you can pilot these innovations in isolated environments, without risking core treasury or loyalty systems.
Action Steps for Digital Executives in B2C
If, like me, you’re now persuaded that stablecoins are not only here to stay, but an increasingly crucial piece of the digital experience and payments puzzle, then you’re probably wondering what your business needs to do next.
The reality is, especially when it comes to financial layers, each business needs to create their own specific plan for where, when, and how to engage with a change in payment layers. But there are some best practices that every business will follow along that path:
- Introduce new payment partners: If you’re not ready to change payment processors, you can onboard Stripe, which offers an onramp to stablecoins and many other payment methods, as a backup processor. This maintains your current relationships, adds resilience, and builds a relationship with a progressive vendor which you can build upon over time.
- Prepare for AI shopping tools: As agents take on a larger role in the customer journey—sometimes even acting on behalf of a shopper at every stage—you need to be ready to offer and process payments using fiat-backed stablecoin.
- Consider vendor payments: As Uber considers stablecoins to better manage FX and remittances, perhaps you do the same.
- Rethink loyalty: Explore how stablecoin-backed rewards can be modular and interoperable.
- Keep it safe: Embrace virtual cards and tokenized payments for AI-agent-based transactions. This might begin with accepting these from consumers today.
- Stay modular: Consider your overall composable stack so that you can integrate new payments and intelligence layers quickly.
The future of payments isn’t just digital, it’s intelligent, adaptive, and modular. And that means for digital leaders, the question isn’t whether to integrate stablecoins or AI, it’s how to do it safely, scalably, and with maximum impact. The companies that experiment and build these foundations today will shape the future of intelligent commerce tomorrow.
Jason Cottrell
Founder and CEO, Orium
Jason Cottrell is the CEO & Founder of Orium, the leading composable commerce consultancy and system integrator in the Americas. He works closely with clients and partners to ensure business goals and customer needs are being met, leading the Orium team through ambitious transformation programs at the intersection of commerce, composability, and customer data.