Recently, I watched a round of discussions about AI Agents and stablecoins, and indeed, the main character in payments has changed.

Imagine, if in the future, buying things and ordering services are all handled by AI, then the way we pay will certainly have to change.

Before, it was operated by people: opening a webpage, selecting items, clicking on payment, entering passwords. But with the Agentic commerce model, the scene has changed: AI helps you find services, automatically compares prices, and then directly makes the payment.

With this change, problems have arisen. Many machine services are charged on a per-use basis, a few cents for calling an API, a few cents for running computational power. These small transactions using traditional payment methods may incur fees higher than the actual consumption, which doesn't make sense.

At this point, looking at stablecoins aligns perfectly: they are quick to arrive, available 7x24 hours, and can support payments of a few cents, making them tailor-made for machine transactions. However, saying that stablecoins will replace credit cards is not very realistic. The foundation built by credit cards over the years, including refunds, risk control, and consumer protection, is extremely effective in e-commerce and daily consumption.

The places where stablecoins can really take off should be in the machine economy: those increasingly numerous API services, AI tools, and automated software, simply put:

➤ Traditional payments solve transactions between people and merchants,

➤ Stablecoins fill the gap for transactions between machines.

If AI Agents truly participate in commercial activities on a large scale, then stablecoins are very likely to gradually become the settlement tool at the core of this system.