Google has released an open-source payments standard to let AI agents send and receive money, including U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins, as tech giants push toward machine-to-machine commerce.
Developed with Coinbase and in consultation with more than 60 firms, including Salesforce, American Express, and Etsy, the move extends Google’s April framework for agent interoperability into payments.
In April, Google introduced its Agent-to-Agent (A2A) specification to standardize how agents talk. Today’s release layers in payments to verify user consent, encode guardrails, and settle across cards and on-chain assets.
If AI agents become routine shoppers, brokers, and back-office bots, standardized payments with stablecoin support could expand crypto’s utility beyond trading. It could also unlock verified, auditable transactions among software agents and across corporate systems.
Wednesday’s launch adds crypto rails alongside card networks so software agents can authenticate intent and move value autonomously. James Tromans, who leads Web3 at Google Cloud, said the protocol was built “from the ground up” to support both legacy rails and stablecoins, Fortune reported on Tuesday.
Google’s push also follows its recent forays into financial-grade blockchain infrastructure via the Google Cloud Universal Ledger. The pilot aimed to create programmable settlements for institutions, signaling a broader strategy to integrate traditional and crypto rails for automation.
The Silicon Valley tech heavyweight isn’t the only entity working on AI-centric rollouts. On Tuesday, the Ethereum Foundation formed its decentralized AI, or “dAI” team, to position crypto’s second-largest blockchain as the AI economy’s base layer.
