Google and Coinbase Partner To Launch AI Payment Protocol

Google has unveiled a groundbreaking open-source protocol that allows artificial intelligence (AI) applications to send and receive payments — including stablecoin transactions — marking a major step in merging crypto with the AI-powered digital economy.

Developed in collaboration with Coinbase and backed by more than 60 global partners including Salesforce, American Express, PayPal, and SAP, the system highlights the rise of stablecoins as the preferred settlement layer for next-generation finance.

Consulting giants like Deloitte, McKinsey, and PwC were also involved, underlining the project’s ambitions to embed AI-to-AI payments into enterprise environments.

Google Cloud’s Web3 director, James Tromans, confirmed that the protocol was built to support both traditional rails like bank cards and crypto-native assets like USDC and USDT, ensuring interoperability between Web2 and Web3.

Coinbase engineers worked closely with Google to guarantee compatibility, while the Ethereum Foundation was consulted to ensure alignment with emerging decentralized infrastructure.

Why Stablecoins Could Power the AI Economy

The protocol expands on Google’s Agent-to-Agent (A2A) framework, first introduced in April to standardize communication between autonomous software agents. With this update, those agents are no longer just decision-makers but also economic actors capable of executing secure transactions across fiat and blockchain systems.

Core features include user consent verification, built-in security safeguards, traceability, and auditability, making the protocol production-ready for real-world adoption rather than a speculative experiment. Each transaction can be verified and integrated into enterprise systems, enabling automation at internet scale.

Industry voices have underscored the significance of this move. Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz predicted that AI agents will become the biggest users of stablecoins, while the Ethereum Foundation has called autonomous software the next major growth driver for blockchain ecosystems.

The foundation even pointed to the dormant HTTP 402 “payment required” code, paired with Ethereum’s EIP-3009, as a way to standardize machine-triggered stablecoin payments.

The timing is also crucial. The U.S. regulatory landscape has become more accommodating through measures like the GENIUS Act, which clarifies rules for stablecoin issuance and use. Combined with stablecoins’ swelling $289 billion market cap, the environment is ripe for large-scale integration.

The Race Between Centralized and Decentralized Players

What’s emerging is a competitive race: centralized giants like Google are pushing scale and institutional integration, while decentralized networks like Ethereum stress transparency and resilience. Both are vying to define the backbone of the autonomous financial web.

For developers, enterprises, and DeFi innovators, Google’s protocol offers more than infrastructure — it’s a blueprint for the world’s first machine-driven economy, where AI agents act as buyers, intermediaries, and managers of value.

The lines between traditional finance and crypto are blurring, and Google just set a new standard for how software may soon transact on our behalf.