Circle has announced a collaboration with OpenMind, a robotics and AI company, to develop standards for machine-to-machine (M2M) payments using USDC.

At the heart of the proposal is the integration of Circle's chain-agnostic Gateway framework with the x402 protocol, an open standard for HTTP-based micropayments originally spearheaded by Coinbase. This hybrid approach promises to unlock high-throughput capabilities, supporting millions of transactions per second through off-chain batching and deferred on-chain settlements.

The collaboration draws on Circle's expertise in stablecoin infrastructure and OpenMind's advancements in AI agent architectures, positioning the duo to shape a standardized layer for the next wave of decentralized applications.

As AI systems increasingly interact with the physical and digital worlds—from automated content creation to supply chain optimization—frictionless micropayments are essential. Current blockchain limitations, such as low throughput and high latency, have hindered adoption, but this proposal could accelerate the shift toward a truly agentic financial ecosystem.

Read the agentic payments proposal on the x402 GitHub:

https://github.com/coinbase/x402/issues/447