We are moving towards an economic system where software and devices transact with each other without human involvement.
Instead of simply executing transactions, machines will be able to make decisions, coordinate with each other, and buy what they need in real time. Sensors and satellites will sell streams of data every second. Factories will price energy purchases in real time based on supply and demand. Supply chains could even become completely autonomous: reordering materials, booking transportation, paying customs duties, and rerouting shipments without any human involvement.
But such an economy cannot be built on infrequent large payments. It must work with billions of small continuous transactions, executed autonomously at machine speed. Just as the price of electricity enabled mass production, microtransactions and machine-to-machine (M2M) payments will make full automation economically viable.
And if seamless M2M payments are the new electricity, then blockchains (the rails on which these microtransactions will occur) should be seen as the new electricity grid. They are a critical piece of infrastructure that unlocks new business models, new technologies, and ultimately this new machine economy.
How will these innovations develop? The electric revolution has many lessons to teach.
A new revolution
Before electrification, power was local, manual, inconsistent and expensive. Factories relied on steam engines or water wheels, limiting where production could take place and how it could be scaled. Power was something that was built into every operation.
Electricity changed that. Once energy was standardized and always available, it ceased to be a feature and became the substrate of modern industry.
Today’s payments still resemble those of the pre-electric power era. They are episodic, generally processed in batches, and strongly mediated by humans and institutions. Even digital payments involve discrete events such as invoices, settlements, reconciliations, or billing cycles.
But M2M payments (autonomous financial transactions between connected devices), when combined with microtransactions (worth a few cents), make the exchange of value environmental and infrastructure-like. Instead of stopping paying, machines can simply run continuously, exchanging value as they consume resources or provide services.
Technology leaders have discussed microtransactions since the early days of the Internet, but it was impossible to make that vision a reality with the current banking system. Now, blockchain technology makes it possible to send value around the world instantly and at almost no cost. The infrastructure of the crypto sector is essential for the birth of seamless M2M payments.
And just as electricity enabled the creation of computers and the Internet, M2M payments and microtransactions will allow an entirely new economy to flourish.
How electricity changed the world
The continuous power provided by electricity allowed for automation. Mass production occurred not because factories hired more workers, but because machines could operate constantly and relatively independently.
Current machines are technically autonomous but economically limited. An AI agent can make decisions, route traffic, or optimize logistics, but it can’t pay for on-the-fly computing. Economic friction forces human intervention in otherwise independent systems. But M2M payments, combined with microtransactions, will provide continuous economic energy in the same way that electricity provides continuous mechanical energy.
Additionally, electricity unlocked industries that simply could not exist before. M2M payments will have the same property, providing economic infrastructure for industries that cannot function without detailed, real-time payments.
What does that look like? We could have autonomous supply chains, where machines coordinate purchasing and logistics continuously. Or we could see the emergence of AI services with pricing models that reflect milliseconds of inference time. Global data markets could depend on pay-per-byte access. The infrastructure itself (from roads to charging stations) could set access prices continuously and automatically.
It’s worth noting that the shift to usage-based pricing also transformed electricity business models. Paying per kilowatt-hour allowed companies to scale without renegotiating contracts or investing in fixed capacity. You paid for what you used when you used it. M2M payments will provide the same flexibility to 21st century businesses.
Lessons from the electrical revolution
At the beginning of electrification, the focus was mainly on the development of generators. However, that was not the most important technological innovation. What mattered was the transmission. Only when electricity could be distributed everywhere, cheaply and predictably, was industry and society reformed.
The same lesson applies to M2M payments. The blockchain rails on which payments will be made matter much more than the specific M2M payment application (such as Coinbase’s x402 protocol) that is used. Therefore, the priority should be to build the best possible blockchains: chains with near-zero fees, very low latency, and predictable performance. In other words, M2M payments face the same frictions as regular stablecoin payments: they need the underlying infrastructure to be in optimal condition if they are to function properly.
Furthermore, blockchains used for automatic payments should be perceived as a neutral infrastructure. They must be interoperable between providers, jurisdictions and machines. After all, machines can’t negotiate customized payment systems any more than household appliances can negotiate voltage standards. That means decentralization can play an important role in the growth of the machine economy. In that case, public blockchains could have an advantage over private alternatives.
If M2M payment lanes achieve this neutrality, they become the coordination layer for autonomous systems, just as electricity is the coordination layer for physical energy. At that point, innovation can safely move on to building entirely new industries powered by machines.
The machine economy will arrive when machines gain the ability to transact continuously, autonomously and invisibly thanks to the power of blockchain. M2M payments are not just a feature of that future. They are your electricity.
