Agentic Payment Volumes Drop Dramatically

Research evidence excerpt

Agentic Payment Volumes Drop Dramatically

Update

July 7, 2026 09:30 AM GMT

Morgan Stanley & Co. LLCMPayments and Processing | North America James E Faucette

Equity Analyst

Agentic Payment Volumes Drop James.Faucette@morganstanley.comMichael N Infante +1 212 296-5771

Michael.Infante@morganstanley.com +1 212 761-4631

Dramatically Meryl R Thomas, CFA

Research Associate

Meryl.Thomas@morganstanley.com +1 212 761-0774

Agentic payment volumes remain de minimis and OpenClaw Shefali Tamaskar

jump has faded, but Visa and Mastercard are still building trust, ResearchShefali.Tamaskar@morganstanley.comAssociate +1 212 761-4948

off-ramp, and settlement layers that could make card and bank

Payments and Processing

rails attractive. North America

Industry View Attractive

Key Takeaways

OpenClaw drove a visible late-25 / early '26 spike, but peak daily volume was only

$603.7K, and has faded since

x402 and MPP have stabilized at $41.9K of daily volume and 172.4K daily

transactions, pointing to microtransaction-heavy usage.

Networks are building ahead of volume, with Visa actively supporting card

issuance and Mastercard focused on trust via BVNK and AP4M.

Bank rails, FedNow, and tokenized deposits can replicate many stablecoin

features and may be attractive for enterprise agentic volumes

Open Standard consortium is worth monitoring, with free minting and burning a

key feature, in addition to collaborative governance and yield-sharing dynamics

Spike in transaction volumes driven by OpenClaw, with limited evidence of

durable traction since...In late '25 / early '26, we saw a meaningful acceleration in

transaction count and volume associated with the launch of OpenClaw, even though

combined daily transaction volume still only peaked at $603.7K, which, for context,