AWS has introduced Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Payments with Coinbase and Stripe, integrating USD Coin (USDC) micropayments into its AgentCore platform so AI agents can pay for resources, including web content, APIs, MCP servers and other agents during execution.
The system aims to reduce the work required to set up billing relationships, manage credentials and enforce spending governance for agent-led transactions.
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It focuses on agents making micropayments, typically under $1 or fractions of a cent, to access paid endpoints as more services adopt pay-per-use models.
Developers can enable Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Payments on existing agents using the AgentCore SDK or console, then connect a Coinbase wallet or a Stripe Privy wallet as the payment connection. Amazon said end users can fund wallets through stablecoin or fiat using a debit card.
Amazon said users must explicitly authorise an agent to access and use a wallet before it can transact. During execution, the platform enforces spending limits per session, with agents operating within defined budgets rather than having open-ended access to funds.
The payment flow in preview uses the x402 protocol, an HTTP-native standard designed for stablecoin micropayments.
When an agent requests a paid endpoint and receives an HTTP 402 “Payment Required” response, Amazon said the platform authenticates with the configured wallet, executes the payment, attaches payment proof and returns the content within the agent’s execution loop.
Transaction activity appears in AgentCore logs, metrics and traces, according to the company.
To support service discovery, Amazon is making the Coinbase x402 Bazaar MCP server available through the AgentCore gateway. Amazon said the server provides a list of x402 endpoints that agents can search, discover and pay for, without requiring developers to hardcode each integration.
Heurist AI, a provider of full-stack AI infrastructure for the on-chain economy, said it is using the feature for a research agent.
Heurist AI founder JW Wang said: “Heurist is using AgentCore Payments for our research agent, which helps end customers to perform financial and crypto analysis and investment advice.
“End customers can set a budget for the research, and the agent uses AgentCore Payments to get accurate real-time data, commonly around markets, social sentiment, and news. We were able to integrate payments quickly to our agent with low effort and few lines of code.”
Coinbase said it developed the x402 protocol and provides CDP wallet infrastructure for the preview.
Coinbase infrastructure growth and strategy head Brian Foster said: “There will soon be more AI agents transacting than humans, and they need money that’s built for the internet – programmable, always on, and global.
“By bringing Coinbase’s stablecoin infrastructure and x402 into AWS AgentCore, we’re giving developers the full stack to build agents that move money at software speed, with the trust and compliance enterprises expect.”
