The post A16z Argues Stablecoins Will Dominate AI Agent B2B Payments appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

Darius Baruo
Feb 19, 2026 19:01

Andreessen Horowitz partner Sam Broner makes the case for stablecoins over credit cards in the emerging $15.88 trillion B2B payments market for AI agents.

Andreessen Horowitz is betting that credit cards won’t cut it for the AI agent economy. In a new analysis published February 19, a16z crypto partner Sam Broner argues that stablecoins—not traditional payment rails—will capture the emerging market for autonomous AI agents making business purchases. The thesis hinges on a counterintuitive observation: AI agents won’t shop like consumers. They’ll operate like businesses, with pre-negotiated vendor relationships, volume pricing, and credit lines. That distinction matters enormously for which payment infrastructure wins. The Tourist vs. Local Problem Broner uses a bazaar metaphor to frame the opportunity. Tourists haggle at every stall, paying retail prices with cash or cards. Locals—the restaurant owner buying from the butcher, the tailor visiting the mechanic—move on credit and established terms. “Dominant agents don’t need tourists’ payment rails,” Broner writes. “They need vendor relationships, working capital, and credit.” This isn’t theoretical. ChatGPT already has negotiated partnerships with Shopify, Amazon, and Expedia that smaller AI startups can’t access. Scale begets scale. A travel agent booking a million flights annually gets better airline terms than one booking ten. Why Cards Fall Short Credit cards work reasonably well for purchases between $20 and $1,000. But AI agents will frequently operate outside that sweet spot—streaming micropayments to compute providers or settling large vendor invoices. Visa doesn’t support sub-cent payments. The 30-cent fixed fee makes micropayments economically impossible. And card technology assumes humans in the loop for approvals and fraud detection—assumptions that break down when agents need to transact autonomously at machine speed. “Agents adoption is happening too quickly for the thousands of PSPs, POSs, merchants,…

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Filed under: News - @ February 20, 2026 2:20 am