US-listed cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase (COIN) is introducing a platform for stablecoin payments to allow businesses to send and receive USDC, the company said Thursday.
Called simply “Coinbase Business,” the new toolset will simplify vendor payments, eliminate chargebacks, and offer seamless API integrations, allowing businesses to scale efficiently, the exchange said.
USDC balances held on Coinbase Business earn a 4.1% APY and can be withdrawn on demand to a linked business bank account via Wire or ACH, according to a blog post. All transactions can be synced with QuickBooks or Xero through integrations with CoinTracker, allowing users to adopt crypto payments while remaining compliant.
The rapidly growing stablecoin field is a competitive space. Coinbase has a 50/50 revenue split with Circle when it comes to the returns earned from the USDC stablecoin, the second largest with a market capitalization of $76 billion. It makes economic sense for Coinbase to bring additional USDC volume to its own platform, even if that new platform appears to compete with companies like Circle Payment Network, introduced earlier this year.
Tom Duff Gordon, vice president of international policy at Coinbase, said there is “a high degree of tolerance” when it comes to the different lines of business Circle is exploring (which are backed by Coinbase), while the exchange lists multiple stablecoins from various jurisdictions. “Some of those directions will overlap and some will be slightly different,” Duff Gordon said in an interview.
There are signs that Coinbase is exploring ways to relax some stablecoin utility across the exchange, as well as on Base, its Ethereum overlay system. Coinbase has been in talks to acquire stablecoin payments company BVNK for around $1.5 billion. Duff Gordon declined to comment on the status of that deal.
Beyond cross-border payments and remittances, Coinbase has been working on areas such as AI-powered agent trading and the expansion of x402, an open source payments protocol for stablecoin transactions between AI agents.
“I think agent commerce, machine-to-machine, X402 and using stablecoins for things like microprogrammable payments in that environment will be very interesting,” Duff Gordon said. “It won’t necessarily grow overnight, but it is absolutely part of the future.”
