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From $1.7M to $42.1M: how far USDC checkout payments have grown

USDC payments on Shopify and Coinbase's protocol reached about $42.1 million by October 2, 2026, per Base. The total for late February 2026 was about $1.7 million. Both totals cover the whole protocol and come from different data sets.

By Janie Nguyen · · 6 min read

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Shopify x CoinBase Partnership

June 2025 to February 2026: a slow start, then about $1.7 million

Shopify and Coinbase introduced the Commerce Payments Protocol on Base, Coinbase's layer 2 network, on June 12, 2025, TokenPost reports.

By early February 2026, more than $1.2 million in USDC had gone through it. That covered roughly 3,200 customers and 5,700 merchants, according to growthepie data cited by Crypto Briefing. By late February, the cumulative settled total was about $1.7 million across roughly 8,000 transactions.

Crypto Briefing calls this a turning point after a slow ramp. Around $750,000 came in the two months before that data point.

By October 2, 2026: $42.1 million and 448,331 payments

Base published its Shopify case study on October 29, 2026. It puts the protocol's net settled payment volume at $42M+, rounded down from $42,141,990. The figure comes from the SeaLaunch dashboard on Dune, retrieved October 2, 2026, alongside 448,331 payments.

The three headline figures on Base's Shopify case study: $42M+ net settled volume, 448K+ payments and $0 customer gas fees

Base's Shopify case study page on www.base.org, captured in November 2026.

Base calls the first figure "net settled payments" as that dashboard shows them. It describes both figures as protocol activity that may change, and gives no further definition.

SeaLaunch's Commerce Payments Protocol dashboard on Dune, the source of Base's figures

SeaLaunch's Commerce Payments Protocol dashboard on dune.com, captured in November 2026. The dashboard updates live, so its totals differ from the October 2 figures Base cites.

The comparison has two limits. The February totals come from growthepie and the October totals from another dashboard, and neither source says whether they count payments the same way. The sources give no figure between late February and October 2, so they don't show which months drove the jump.

The total grew sharply in 2026, but the timing inside that stretch is unknown.

Why can USDC work at an ordinary checkout?

USDC is a stablecoin, a cryptocurrency built to hold a steady value. According to Circle, it is designed to stay equal to one US dollar and can be redeemed 1:1 for dollars. It is issued through regulated affiliates of Circle, a private financial technology company.

Circle's USDC page introducing USDC as a stablecoin for businesses

Circle's USDC page on www.circle.com, captured in November 2026.

Paying is simple for the customer. They use a supported crypto wallet and don't need ETH for network fees, because Coinbase Payments covers that gas. The merchant receives local currency on the usual payout schedule, Base says.

Payments also follow card-style steps. The buyer's authorized funds sit in escrow until the merchant captures them, and an order can be cancelled before capture or refunded afterward. These features make USDC easier to accept than a plain wallet transfer.

Nothing in the sources shows that these features caused the growth.

The growth belongs to the whole protocol, with Shopify as one part

The protocol is open source, so other commerce platforms and payment providers can build on it, Base notes. Crypto Briefing reported in September 2026 that operators outside the Shopify ecosystem had started doing so.

On September 2, 2026, @arc open-sourced a demo store app on the protocol, for testnet use only.

That is why the totals can't be read as Shopify sales. As TokenPost's Simon Yoon notes, they came with no breakdown by merchant, integration or region, and the payment count doesn't show how many customers or orders were involved.

The published figures don't show how much of the $42.1 million came from Shopify stores.

Who is outside these numbers?

On Shopify, only eligible Shopify Payments merchants in supported locations can accept USDC. The U.S. list excludes Alaska, New York and Texas, according to TokenPost.

Many merchants are also holding back. In a merchant payments study, Oliver Wyman found that 51% are not planning to accept stablecoin, mainly because of insufficient consumer demand and a lack of cost savings. The firm says "Merchant adoption of stablecoin for payment acceptance is nascent."

Until the dashboard's next reading, or a Shopify-only figure from Shopify or Base, $42.1 million measures the protocol as a whole.

Sources

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