Identity checks to power AI stablecoin payments added to Coinbase-incubated x402

Hold up — AI is about to start buying its own booze (and travel tickets, and video games). Concordium just dropped its ID and age-verification system into x402, the Coinbase-incubated protocol. Translation: AI-powered apps can now make automated stablecoin payments for stuff that requires you to prove you're old enough. Think travel bookings, online content, gaming — basically anything with an age gate.

Concordium CEO Boris Bohrer-Bilowitzki said the partnership is all about “enabling verified stablecoin payments at scale.” No more AI getting carded at the digital door.

Quick refresher: x402 is that slick protocol that lets you do pay-per-use payments over HTTP — no logins, no complex auth. It’s basically a stablecoin payment standard for the web, and it got its start inside Coinbase (though the exchange doesn’t own it).

Concordium isn’t playing small ball. They also just inked a deal with Bitcoin.com to roll out verified stablecoin payments across its network of 75+ million wallets. Age checks are going mainstream, fast.

Stablecoins are already a $300B+ market, but the next wave of adoption might not be human. Mike Novogratz from Galaxy Digital told Bloomberg that “in the not-so-distant future, the biggest user of stablecoins is going to be AI.” Yeah, machines are about to outspend us.

Big Tech is already on it. Google built an open-source protocol so AI apps can send and receive stablecoin payments directly. The Ethereum Foundation also pointed out that “autonomous agents are about to become Ethereum’s biggest power users.”

And over on Sui, agentic finance protocol Beep just launched a wallet that lets AI agents move stablecoins with zero transaction fees. The machine economy is live.

Bottom line: AI isn’t just generating text and images anymore — it’s about to become a massive payment layer. And with ID checks baked in, it can finally buy the grown-up stuff.