Coinbase (COIN), the US-listed cryptocurrency exchange, is introducing a stablecoin payments platform to allow businesses to send and receive USDC, the company announced Thursday.
Simply named “Coinbase Business,” the new set of tools will simplify vendor payments, eliminate chargebacks and offer seamless API integrations, allowing businesses to scale efficiently, the exchange said.
USDC balances held in Coinbase Business earn 4.1% APY and can be cashed out on demand to a linked business bank account via Wire or ACH, according to a blog post. All transactions can be synced to QuickBooks or Xero through integrations with CoinTracker, allowing users to adopt crypto payments while remaining compliant.
The fast-growing stablecoin arena is a competitive space. Coinbase splits its revenue 50/50 with Circle when it comes to the yield generated by the stablecoin USDC, the second largest with a market cap of $76 billion. It makes economic sense for Coinbase to bring additional USDC volume onto its own platform, even if this new platform appears to compete with Circle Payment Network, unveiled 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 many different business lines Circle explores (which are supported by Coinbase), while the exchange lists multiple stablecoins from multiple jurisdictions. “Some of these directions will overlap and some will be slightly different,” Duff Gordon said in an interview.
There are signs that Coinbase is exploring ways to adapt some stablecoin utilities across the exchange as well as on Base, its Ethereum overlay system. Coinbase has held negotiations to acquire stablecoin payments company BVNK for approximately $1.5 billion. Duff Gordon declined to comment on the status of that deal.
Beyond cross-border payments and remittances, Coinbase has worked on areas such as AI-driven agent commerce 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 this environment are going to be very interesting,” Duff Gordon said. “It’s not necessarily going to happen overnight, but it’s absolutely part of the future.”
