Circle has launched Nanopayments on testnet, unlocking gas-free USDC payments as tiny as $0.000001. Nanopayments runs on the Circle Gateway infrastructure and is designed to support machine-to-machine payments and the growing agent-driven economy, where AI agents and devices transact autonomously. This new payment primitive aims to enable scalable, real-time microtransactions for applications like pay-per-call APIs, compute billing, and rapid commerce between autonomous agents.
Sub-Cent Payment Feasibility and Technical Structure
Legacy financial systems and even current blockchain networks present substantial barriers for sub-cent transactions due to high fixed and gas fees. Traditionally, making a $0.0001 payment on chain can incur processing costs orders of magnitude larger than the payment itself, making such use cases impractical and expensive for developers and users.
Circle addresses these limitations with off-chain aggregation and on-chain batched settlement. Thousands of micropayments are grouped and settled together on chain, lowering the cost per transaction to negligible levels. Additionally, Circle absorbs all gas expenses at the settlement layer, ensuring each transaction remains entirely fee-free for users and developers on the application layer.
The system leverages EIP-3009 authorization messages signed by agents. When an agent pays a merchant, the transaction is validated by API, instantly updates the internal ledger, and merchants are notified in real time. Actual blockchain settlement happens periodically, avoiding user-facing disruptions.
x402 Standard and Account-Free Merchant Payments
Circle Nanopayments implements the x402 compatibility standard, allowing any autonomous agent or device to pay participating merchants without requiring account registration or credit card details. This framework aims to streamline agentic transaction flows across decentralized and automated services, eliminating the onboarding costs and friction typically seen with payment rails.
The company characterized the offering by stating, “The financial rail for the agentic economy is here,” emphasizing its focus on infrastructure for widespread, seamless payments across diverse agent-driven use cases.
Real-World Testing and Supported Blockchain Networks
Recent demonstration of the payment system came through collaboration with OpenMind, a robotics software developer. In a notable real-world scenario, an autonomous robot dog completed payment for its own energy recharge using USDC through Circle Nanopayments. The process enabled instant transaction confirmation and uninterrupted operation while blockchain settlement finalized discreetly in the background.
As of February 2026, Circle Nanopayments operates on the testnets of 12 blockchain networks, including Arbitrum, Base, Ethereum, Polygon PoS, Avalanche, Optimism, Sei, Sonic, Unichain, HyperEVM, Arc, and World Chain. The payment system supports any EVM-compatible network via Gateway, enabling developers to select from a wide range of chains for microtransaction use cases.
Circle is a global payments technology company primarily known for issuing USDC, a leading regulated stablecoin widely used in digital asset markets and decentralized finance. Its new microtransaction system targets emerging business models that rely on the frictionless transfer of fractional value among both human and AI-operated actors.
The testnet phase encourages developers to experiment with and validate business models built on sub-cent and gasless payments, including applications in pay-per-service APIs and autonomous device billing. No mainnet deployment timeline has been specified, but Circle continues to promote Nanopayments as foundational infrastructure for future agentic and machine commerce.
