Coinbase Launches Payments MCP Linking AI Agents to On-Chain Stablecoin Transfers

The release advances an open x402 standard for machine payments with embedded safeguards.

Overview

Payments MCP lets supported models create wallets, on-ramp funds, and send stablecoin payments via natural-language prompts.
Initial support covers Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini, OpenAI’s Codex, and Cherry Studio, with ChatGPT not yet compatible due to its streaming transport.
Users can open and fund agent wallets using only an email address, operate through a local desktop interface, and avoid API key setup.
Agent wallets include configurable funding caps, approval thresholds, and session limits, with Coinbase applying KYC checks at entry and exit points.
Coinbase and Cloudflare are backing a new x402 Foundation to steward the open protocol, with broader model and developer tool support planned.