Method, definitions and revision policy
Method before conclusions. An index nobody else can reproduce is a marketing number, not an index. Everything below can be recomputed by you.
Definitions
| Week | ISO week starting Monday 00:00 UTC, written 2026-W36. |
| Denominator | Items in our corpus with a publication date in that week (title + summary retained from sources). |
| Numerator | Items whose title or summary matches the term or any alias; each item counts once. Latin aliases match whole words, case-insensitive; Chinese aliases match substrings. |
| Density | numerator ÷ denominator × 1000 — hits per thousand items (‰). |
| Index | density ÷ base-period density × 100. Base period 2026-W28 = 100. Terms with zero base density get density only, no index. |
| Insufficient sample | Flagged when the week's denominator is below 30; numbers are shown, conclusions are not drawn. |
| Method version | obs-v1.0 |
Coverage and limits
- This is density within our corpus, not web-wide popularity. Corpus starts 2015-12-11, 10035 items to date from 161 continuously crawled sources.
- Sources are mostly English (144 English / 17 Chinese), which naturally under-represents the non-English world. Full list below.
- Backfilled history only includes what feeds still exposed at the time, so early weeks are thin; density normalises by denominator but thin weeks still jitter.
- The term list is curated; there is no automatic tokenisation. Phrases outside the list do not appear — deliberately, because tokenisation mistakes noise for discovery.
- We do not publish search popularity (Google/Baidu data is neither licensable nor verifiable) and we do not list individual practitioners (personal data).
Freezing and revisions
Every Monday, weeks older than the previous week are frozen; frozen values are never recomputed. Adding or removing sources only affects unfrozen weeks. Any change of definitions bumps the method version and is recorded here; history is never silently altered.
| Week | Items | Publishers | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-W38 | 765 | 138 | open |
| 2026-W37 | 2639 | 358 | open |
| 2026-W36 | 971 | 226 | frozen |
| 2026-W35 | 224 | 102 | frozen |
| 2026-W34 | 159 | 69 | frozen |
| 2026-W33 | 102 | 55 | frozen |
| 2026-W32 | 98 | 68 | frozen |
| 2026-W31 | 103 | 67 | frozen |
| 2026-W30 | 98 | 66 | frozen |
| 2026-W29 | 121 | 70 | frozen |
| 2026-W28 | 169 | 93 | frozen |
| 2026-W27 | 134 | 92 | frozen |
| 2026-W26 | 109 | 63 | frozen |
| 2026-W25 | 143 | 88 | frozen |
| 2026-W24 | 116 | 72 | frozen |
| 2026-W23 | 84 | 52 | frozen |
| 2026-W22 | 91 | 58 | frozen |
| 2026-W21 | 94 | 72 | frozen |
| 2026-W20 | 64 | 35 | frozen |
How to cite
OceanAlt Agent Payment Observatory, <term>, <period>, https://oceanalt.com/en/observatory/<term> (obs-v1.0)
Term list
| x402 | protocol | x402 |
| AP2 | protocol | AP2 · Agent Payments Protocol |
| MPP | protocol | Machine Payments Protocol · MPP protocol |
| ACP | protocol | Agentic Commerce Protocol |
| MCP | protocol | Model Context Protocol |
| A2A | protocol | Agent2Agent · A2A protocol |
| ERC-8004 | identity | ERC-8004 · ERC8004 |
| KYA | identity | KYA · Know Your Agent · Know-Your-Agent |
| Agent identity | identity | agent identity · agent identities · Agent 身份 · 智能体身份 |
| Payment mandate | mandate | mandate · mandates · spending limit · spending limits · 消费限额 · 支付授权 |
| Agent wallet | wallet | agent wallet · agent wallets · agentic wallet · Agent 钱包 · 智能体钱包 |
| Prompt injection | risk | prompt injection · 提示注入 · 提示词注入 |
| Travel Rule | risk | Travel Rule · 旅行规则 |
| Sanctions screening | risk | OFAC · sanctions screening · sanctioned · 制裁名单 · 制裁筛查 |
| AML | risk | AML · anti-money laundering · 反洗钱 |
| Stablecoin | stablecoin | stablecoin · stablecoins · 稳定币 |
| USDC | stablecoin | USDC |
| USDT | stablecoin | USDT · Tether |
| PYUSD | stablecoin | PYUSD |
| Base | network | Base chain · Base network · on Base |
| Tempo | network | Tempo blockchain · Tempo chain · Tempo Labs |
| Arc | network | Circle Arc · Arc blockchain |
| Visa Intelligent Commerce | bank | Visa Intelligent Commerce · Trusted Agent Protocol |
| Mastercard Agent Pay | bank | Agent Pay · Mastercard Agent Pay |
| Stripe agentic commerce | merchant | Stripe agentic · Agentic Commerce Suite · shared payment token · shared payment tokens |
| Coinbase AgentKit | wallet | AgentKit |
| Skyfire | identity | Skyfire |
| Catena Labs | mandate | Catena Labs · Catena |
| OpenAI commerce | merchant | Instant Checkout · ChatGPT checkout · OpenAI checkout |
| Google agent payments | merchant | Google Pay agent · Google agent payments · Gemini shopping |
| GENIUS Act | policy | GENIUS Act · GENIUS 法案 |
| MiCA | policy | MiCA |
| HK stablecoin ordinance | policy | HKMA stablecoin · Stablecoins Ordinance · 香港稳定币 · 稳定币条例 |
| MAS (Singapore) | policy | Monetary Authority of Singapore · MAS Singapore · 新加坡金管局 |
| FATF | policy | FATF |
| Agentic commerce | merchant | agentic commerce · agent commerce · Agent 商务 · 智能体商务 |
| Agentic payments | protocol | agentic payment · agentic payments · agent payments · machine payments · Agent 支付 · 智能体支付 · 机器支付 |
| Agent economy | market | agent economy · agentic economy · Agent 经济 · 智能体经济 |
Source list
AP2 repository releases (en), Blockworks (en), Circle Official Blog (en), CoinDesk (en), Cointelegraph (en), DL News (en), Finextra (en), GNews: AI Agent security/prompt injection (en), GNews: AI agent payments (Chinese) (zh), GNews: Agent payment protocols x402/AP2/ACP (en), GNews: Anthropic/Claude (en), GNews: Circle/USDC (en), GNews: FATF (official) (en), GNews: GENIUS Act (en), GNews: HKMA (official) (en), GNews: OFAC (official) (en), GNews: Tether/USDT (en), GNews: Visa Intelligent Commerce (en), GNews: x402/Agent payments (en), GNews: Going-global payments (Chinese) (zh), GNews: Stablecoin regulation (Chinese) (zh), GNews: Stablecoin regulation (global) (en), GNews: Stablecoins (Chinese) (zh), GNews: Cross-border payment stablecoins (en), GNews: Hong Kong stablecoins/HKMA (en), GNews: Hong Kong virtual assets (Chinese) (zh), Google Blog: AI (en), Ledger Insights compliance (en), MCP specification releases (en), MPP specification commits (en), OpenAI Blog (en), PYMNTS (en), Stripe Blog (en), TechCrunch Fintech (en), The Block (en), x402 repository releases (en), US CFTC Press Releases (en), US SEC Press Releases (en), Federal Reserve Press Releases (en), AI Engineer (en), Banking Dive (en), Bankless (en), Base (en), Bell Curve (en), Bitcoin Magazine (en), CNBC (en), Chainalysis Blog (en), Circle (en), CoinDesk (en), Coinbase (en), Coinbase Blog (en), Cointelegraph (en), Crypto Briefing (en), Decrypt (en), Delphi Digital (en), Digital Transactions (en), Empire (en), Epicenter (en), FIDO Alliance (AP2) (en), Finextra Payments (en), Fintech News HK (en), Fintech News SG (en), Fireblocks Blog (en), Forward Guidance (en), GNews: AI financial risk control/fraud (en), GNews: Agent wallets (en), GNews: Agentic commerce merchants (en), GNews: Airwallex/Nium (en), GNews: Anthropic (official) (en), GNews: BIS Project Agora/mBridge (en), GNews: BlockBeats (Chinese) (zh), GNews: Cloudflare Agents/payments (en), GNews: Coinbase Developer Platform (en), GNews: Coinbase payments (en), GNews: ERC-8004 Trustless Agents (en), GNews: Elliptic Blog (en), GNews: FATF Travel Rule (en), GNews: FinCEN AML (en), GNews: Foresight News (Chinese) (zh), GNews: IMF stablecoins/digital money (en), GNews: KYA Know Your Agent (en), GNews: MCP payments (en), GNews: Mastercard Agent Pay (en), GNews: Mastercard Newsroom (en), GNews: OFAC sanctions crypto (en), GNews: Odaily (Chinese) (zh), GNews: PANews (Chinese) (zh), GNews: Paradigm Research (en), GNews: PayPal PYUSD (en), GNews: PayPal Newsroom (en), GNews: Skyfire/Nevermined/Catena (en), GNews: Stripe MPP/Tempo (en), GNews: Stripe Newsroom (en), GNews: Sumsub Blog (en), GNews: TRM Labs (en), GNews: Tempo (official) (en), GNews: Visa Newsroom (en), GNews: Visa/Mastercard official announcements (en), GNews: Wise/remittances (en), GNews: a16z crypto (en), GNews: a16z crypto research (en), GNews: x402 Foundation (official) (en), GNews: Southeast Asia payments (Chinese) (zh), GNews: Middle East fintech (en), GNews: Asia fintech (en), GNews: Enterprise adoption of stablecoin payments (en), GNews: India UPI/payments tech (en), GNews: Taiwan stablecoins (Chinese) (zh), GNews: Central banks/BIS Agentic payments (en), GNews: Central bank digital currency (CBDC) (en), GNews: Brazil Pix/Latin America payments (en), GNews: Digital RMB cross-border (Chinese) (zh), GNews: Digital currency industry (Chinese) (zh), GNews: Singapore MAS payments (en), GNews: Japan stablecoins/JPYC (en), GNews: Agent payments (Chinese) (zh), GNews: Europe payments/stablecoins (en), GNews: EU ESMA/MiCA enforcement (en), GNews: EU MiCA (en), GNews: TechFlow (Chinese) (zh), GNews: Stablecoin/Agent payments research reports (en), GNews: Stablecoin market/adoption (en), GNews: Stablecoin payment infrastructure/rails (en), GNews: US Treasury/OCC crypto (en), GNews: Caixin stablecoins (Chinese) (zh), GNews: Dubai VARA/UAE crypto (en), GNews: Africa stablecoins/Nigeria (en), GNews: South Korea stablecoins/Korean won (en), GNews: Hong Kong HKMA stablecoin licences (en), GNews: Hong Kong SFC (official) (en), Import AI (en), Latent Space (en), Latent Space (en), MCP Official Blog (en), MIT Tech Review (en), Messari (en), Nikkei Asia (en), OpenAI (en), Payments Dive (en), Protos (en), Real Vision (en), SCMP Tech (en), Simon Willison(AI) (en), Stripe (en), Stripe Developers (en), The Defiant (en), The Fintech Times (en), The Rollup (en), The Verge AI (en), Unchained (en), VentureBeat AI (en), Y Combinator (en), a16z (en), a16z crypto (en), YouTube: @wushuopodcast (Chinese) (zh), Bank for International Settlements (BIS) (en), Singapore MAS News (en), European Central Bank (ECB) (en), UK FCA (en), Bank of England (BoE) (en), Financial Stability Board (FSB) (en)