a16z: AI-assisted payments are far lower than reported in the media, but adoption is growing.

Huoxun Finance reported on March 12th that, according to Cointelegraph, a16z partner Noah Levine stated in an article on the X platform that the transaction volume of AI-powered payment agents is far lower than reported by the media. He pointed out that while reports claimed AI agent payments reached $24 million in the past 30 days, the actual figure, after excluding wash trades, is only about $1.6 million. Levine stated that this gap reflects that even the measurement infrastructure is still in its early stages. Levine noted that most AI payment activity is currently concentrated in the developer tools space, such as websites converted into AI data platforms, AI browsers, and AI image platforms. While these companies accept credit card payments, the x402 protocol allows developers or agents to try out the tools without a subscription. Levine emphasized that while $1.6 million may not seem like a large sum, the infrastructure built around it is massive. Stripe, Cloudflare, Vercel, and others have integrated x402, and Google has also embedded it in its agent payment protocol. These companies are betting on the future scale when agents become the default buyers.