Amazon Bedrock Launches AI Agent Payment Capabilities With Coinbase, Stripe

Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced in a Thursday (May 7) company blog post a set of tools designed to allow artificial intelligence agents to conduct financial transactions autonomously.

The new feature, Amazon Bedrock AgentCore payments, enables AI agents to instantly access and pay for digital resources such as web content, APIs and specialized services, the post said. To power the underlying financial rails, AWS partnered with Coinbase and Stripe, which provide the wallet infrastructure and payment protocols.

The initiative aims to solve a key friction point in AI development: the manual wiring of billing relationships for every service an agent might need. Instead, the new system allows agents to discover and pay for resources in a single execution loop, per the post.

Initially, the service is focused on micropayments facilitated by the x402 protocol, an open standard for stablecoin-based machine-to-machine payments, according to the post.

The system includes built-in governance and security controls, the post said. Developers can set spending limits per session, and agents require explicit user authorization before accessing funded wallets.

Coinbase Head of Infrastructure Growth and Strategy Brian Foster said in the post that AI agents will soon transact more frequently than humans, requiring money that is “programmable, always on and global.”

Early adopters include Warner Bros. Discovery, which is exploring the technology to surface and transact on premium content like live sports, and Heurist AI, which uses it for financial research agents, according to the post.

While currently limited to micropayments for data and APIs, AWS plans to expand into broader commerce, such as agents booking flights or hotel reservations on behalf of users, the post said. The preview is currently available in Northern Virginia, Oregon, Frankfurt and Sydney.

This AI play is the latest in a larger push by Amazon to integrate the technology in its various verticals. On Tuesday (May 5), the company said it is considering integrating Rufus AI into its main search bar. Last month, Amazon released a report detailing how its in-house AI tools helped its sellers improve their revenue.

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