Set up Circle Programmable Wallets and the Circle Agent Stack to enable AI agent payouts, nanopayments, and autonomous USDC settlement

Verified steps

1. Create a Circle developer account and enable Developer-Controlled Wallets (not User-Controlled); developer-controlled wallets are appropriate when your service orchestrates wallet actions on behalf of agents, since the private key operations are handled by Circle's infrastructure, not your application server
2. Provision wallets via the Circle Wallets API: each wallet is identified by a wallet ID and is associated with a blockchain network (e.g., Base, Ethereum, Solana); use wallet sets to group agent wallets for policy and reporting purposes
3. Integrate the Circle Agent Stack (launched May 2026): Agent Wallets provide programmable spend limits and policy guardrails; Circle Gateway enables receiving payments as small as $0.000001 USDC with revenue credited to a Gateway Balance; the Agent Marketplace enables service-to-service discovery
4. For agent payouts at scale, use the Circle Wallets batch transfer capability combined with Thirdweb Engine; batch USDC payouts across multiple recipient wallets atomically, settling on the configured chain with CCTP if cross-chain recipients are involved
5. Configure your Circle Gateway receiving endpoint to respond to x402 402 requests from paying agents; the Gateway deposits received USDC into your Gateway Balance, which you withdraw to a designated Payout Wallet via the Circle API
6. Test the full payout lifecycle in Circle's sandbox, including a nanopayment (sub-cent amount), a batch payout to multiple wallets, and a cross-chain transfer via CCTP — verify each leg with Circle's transaction status API before treating receipts as final