<div id="readability-page-1" class="page"><div><div><p><em><span><span>Author: Chloe, ChainCatcher</span></span></em></p><p dir="ltr"><span>In early 2026, an asymmetrical bet was unfolding in the payments industry. From Circle launching the Arc blockchain and Nanopayments, to Stripe partnering with Paradigm to incubate the payment public chain Tempo and spending $1.1 billion to acquire Bridge, the giants shared a common goal: they were no longer designing payment tools for humans, but rather building entirely new financial tracks for AI agents.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>The logic of this arms race revolves around the fact that as AI agents become the main players in economic activities, the traditional credit card 2-3% transaction fees will gradually become unnecessary, replaced by extremely low-fee stablecoin payment protocols.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span> In February of this year, a lengthy scenario report from Citrini Research predicted this future, causing Visa, Mastercard, and American Express to lose 5-7% of their market capitalization in a single day. Is this an overreaction by the market, or a premature pricing of future value by capital? It remains to be seen. However, a huge gap exists between the ideal and reality: while the monthly transaction volume of the x402 protocol was still only $24 million, the global e-commerce market was already a behemoth of $6.88 trillion. This inevitably raises the question: is this a groundbreaking strategic move, or a reckless gamble that mortgages the future? The arms race in the AI ​​payment sector has begun, but the battlefield is yet to be formed. In early March 2026, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire revealed a detail: the company completed an internal settlement of $68 million between its eight business entities within 30 minutes using its own USDC stablecoin, without the need for traditional bank wire transfers. By traditional financial standards, a cross-border transfer of the same size would typically take 1 to 3 business days and incur expensive bank fees. This practical result sends a clear signal to the market: the potential of stablecoins as &#34;modern financial infrastructure&#34; cannot be ignored. It proves that enterprises can bypass traditional banking networks and achieve large-scale cross-border or intra-bank fund transfers at low cost and high efficiency. This is not an isolated case; the infrastructure accumulated by the crypto industry in the past is about to begin to exert its power. Circle's Dual-Pronged Approach: Focusing on Micropayments and Agent Commerce Circle's strategy demonstrates a clear dual-pronged approach: First, Arc, a Layer 1 blockchain that launched its public testnet in October 2025, uses USDC as its native gas token. This blockchain boasts sub-second finality and predictable &#34;USD-denominated&#34; fees, precisely addressing the pain point of traditional EVM chains in payment scenarios—cost fluctuations caused by on-chain congestion. Secondly, Nanopayments, launched in early March this year, supports USDC transfers as low as $0.000001 with no gas fees. Through batch on-chain settlement, Circle consolidates thousands of micro-transactions into a single on-chain operation, reducing the cost per transaction to near zero. Circle's collaboration with OpenMind was also impressive, with a robotic dog named Bits autonomously paying its electricity bill, symbolizing a proof-of-concept for &#34;proxy commerce&#34; and demonstrating the possibility of robots acting as independent entities in the physical world. Stripe's strategic layout focuses on ecosystem scale and integration with traditional finance. Stripe's strategic layout also demonstrates its ambition to the market. In September 2025, Stripe partnered with crypto venture capital firm Paradigm to launch Tempo, a Layer 1 blockchain dedicated to payments, aiming to achieve 100,000 transactions per second and sub-second finality. Tempo's architecture shares a similar design philosophy with Circle's Arc, both supporting stablecoin gas fee payments and incorporating an Automated Market Maker (AMM) for cross-currency settlement. However, Tempo's ecosystem partners also include top institutions and traditional financial giants such as Visa, Mastercard, UBS, OpenAI, and Shopify. On the other hand, considering Stripe's previous acquisitions of Bridge ($1.1 billion), the Privy deal, and its investment in Tempo, Stripe's total investment in stablecoin infrastructure is likely to have exceeded $1.5 billion. </span></p><p><img src="https://imageproxy.pbkrs.com/https://img.jinse.com.cn/7439140_image3.png?x-oss-process=image/auto-orient,1/interlace,1/resize,w_1440,h_1440/quality,q_95/format,jpg" width="600" height="326" original-src="https://imageproxy.pbkrs.com/https://img.jinse.com.cn/7439140_image3.png"/></p><h2><span>How Citrini Research Triggered Black Monday for Traditional Payment Giants</span></h2><p dir="ltr"><span>In late February 2026, an independent organization called Citrini Research published a lengthy situational report of several thousand words on Substack, titled</span><span>The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis</span><span>. The report's core narrative is that as AI agents begin making shopping and payment decisions for consumers on a large scale, &#34;eliminating transaction friction and costs&#34; will naturally become one of the goals of algorithm optimization. In Citrini's envisioned scenario, by 2027, these agent systems will begin to bypass traditional credit card networks and switch to settlement in stablecoins on Solana or Ethereum Layer 2, where the cost of a transaction is only a fraction of that in traditional finance. The report spread virally in the tech and finance sectors after its weekend release, and by the opening of trading on Monday, February 23, market sentiment had deteriorated rapidly. That day, Visa's stock price fell by more than 4%, Mastercard by more than 6%, and American Express by nearly 8%, with several institutions primarily focused on credit cards and consumer finance losing tens of billions of dollars in market capitalization in a single trading day. As the report was shared by multiple tech and finance KOLs on social media platforms such as X, Citrini's macro scenario memo, originally intended as a &#34;risk drill,&#34; was quickly misinterpreted by the market as an &#34;imminent fundamental prediction,&#34; further amplifying concerns about the relationship between AI, stablecoins, and traditional payment networks. </span></p><p><img src="https://imageproxy.pbkrs.com/https://img.jinse.com.cn/7439141_image3.png?x-oss-process=image/auto-orient,1/interlace,1/resize,w_1440,h_1440/quality,q_95/format,jpg" width="600" height="290" original-src="https://imageproxy.pbkrs.com/https://img.jinse.com.cn/7439141_image3.png"/></p><h2><span>Why Stablecoins are the “Natural Currency” for AI Agents</span></h2><p dir="ltr"><span>To understand why stablecoin issuers like Circle and payment infrastructure providers like Stripe regard betting on “agent-native payments” as their next strategic direction, we must first understand one thing: when the main body of transactions changes from humans to AI agents, the design premise of traditional credit card networks actually begins to loosen.</span></p><p><img src="https://imageproxy.pbkrs.com/https://img.jinse.com.cn/7439141_image3.png?x-oss-process=image/auto-orient,1/interlace,1/resize,w_1440,h_1440/quality,q_95/format,jpg" width="600" height="290" original-src="https://imageproxy.pbkrs.com/https://img.jinse.com.cn/7439141_image3.png"/></p><h2><span>To understand why stablecoin issuers like Circle and payment infrastructure providers like Stripe regard betting on “agent-native payments” as their next strategic direction, we must first understand one thing: when the main body of transactions changes from humans to AI agents, the design premise of traditional credit card networks actually begins to loosen.</span></h2></div></div></div>

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<p>Circle's stock price has doubled amid a significant shift in the payments industry, driven by the rise of AI agents and stablecoin payment protocols. The company launched the Arc blockchain and Nanopayments, enabling low-cost transactions without traditional banking fees. Meanwhile, Stripe is investing heavily in stablecoin infrastructure with its Tempo blockchain. A report from Citrini Research predicted a future where AI agents bypass traditional credit card networks, causing major payment companies to lose market capitalization. This evolving landscape raises questions about the sustainability and implications of these innovations in financial transactions.</p>

- In early 2026, major players in the payments industry, including Circle and Stripe, are pivoting towards AI-driven payment systems, focusing on the implementation of stablecoin protocols to reduce transaction costs.  
- A report from Citrini Research predicts that as AI agents dominate economic activities, traditional credit card systems will be bypassed for low-fee transactions, leading to a significant decline in market capitalizations for established firms like Visa and Mastercard.  
- Circle's innovations, alongside Stripe's investments in blockchain technology, are indicating a shift in financial infrastructure, highlighting the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of stablecoin transactions over traditional banking methods.

Circle's stock price doubles; a paradigm shift in stablecoins.