Today, Coinbase is announcing our intent to launch the x402 Foundation, in collaboration with Cloudflare. This new initiative is designed to establish x402 as the universal standard for AI-driven payments. By creating a neutral, open standard, we aim to unlock the full potential of agentic commerce, enabling seamless, autonomous transactions between AI agents, businesses, and users.
Why the x402 Foundation Matters
The x402 protocol is revolutionizing how payments work on the internet. By leveraging the HTTP "402 Payment Required" status code, x402 embeds payments directly into web interactions, enabling AI agents, APIs, and apps to transact value as seamlessly as they exchange data. This innovation eliminates the friction of traditional payment systems, paving the way for a new era of automated, scalable commerce.
The ecosystem is rapidly expanding as developers and companies recognize its potential. And while adoption is still in its early stages, x402 is already powering transformative use cases, including:
Pay-per-use AI and research: Per-request access to models and premium content without subscriptions.
On-demand data and signals: Pay-as-you-go for scraping, news feeds, and real-time analyticsSeamlessly paying for scraping, news feeds, and real-time analytics.
Creator micropayments and identity: Tipping and pay-per-content today; optional identity attestations emerging.
Storage and media: Pay-as-you-go patterns for storage, compute, and content delivery, with active pilots.
Agentic commerce: Agent-to-agent payments with x402; compatible with MCP-style workflows.
As momentum accelerates, x402 is poised to become the backbone of agent-driven economies, transforming how value is exchanged across the internet. However, for x402 to reach its full potential, it must be an open, neutral standard. The x402 Foundation ensures transparent governance, fostering collaboration, and inviting contributions from across the ecosystem.
A New Era for Payments
Legacy payment systems were built for people, not machines. They rely on intermediaries, subscriptions, and manual processes that make scaling agentic commerce nearly impossible. x402 changes this by enabling real-time, stablecoin-based transactions that are fast, secure, and frictionless.
The x402 Foundation will focus on:
Governance: Establishing x402 as a neutral, open standard to encourage adoption by developers, businesses, and AI platforms.
Ecosystem growth: Supporting developers with grants, tools, and resources to build on x402.
Interoperability: Ensuring x402 works seamlessly across platforms, industries, and geographies.
Unlocking New Possibilities
With the x402 Foundation, we’re laying the groundwork for a future where AI agents can autonomously transact, creating entirely new workflows and business models.
Dynamic AI agents: Agents that pay for data, services, or compute resources in real time to complete tasks without human intervention.
Micropayments at scale: Businesses monetizing APIs, content, or services on a pay-per-use basis, removing the need for subscriptions.
Autonomous systems: AI-driven systems that manage their own finances, from self-driving taxis to automated supply chains.
A Collaborative Future
The x402 Foundation will be co-founded by Coinbase and Cloudflare, with additional members to be announced. Partnering with Cloudflare allows us to leverage their expertise in internet infrastructure and global scalability to ensure x402 becomes a truly universal standard. For example, Cloudflare will be adding a deferred payments scheme to x402 to their pay per crawl beta, enabling developers to integrate payments seamlessly into web-based data access and services.
Cloudflare’s commitment to an open and accessible internet aligns perfectly with the goals of the x402 Foundation, enabling us to build a payments protocol that works seamlessly across platforms, geographies, and industries.
Together, we’re committed to building an open, programmable economy that benefits everyone—from developers and businesses to the users and agents they serve.
And this is just the beginning. We’ll be looking to add more members as this scales, including those who are using x402 in production; representatives across consumer, enterprise, and developer-focused companies; AI companies building LLMs; e-commerce platforms, and much more.
You can learn more about the x402 Foundation and how you can get involved at https://www.x402.org/.
About Dan Kim
Dan Kim is VP Business Development and Listings at Coinbase, the world’s most trusted cryptocurrency exchange where he leads strategic partnerships with developers, creators, and users of the global web3 ecosystem. Dan also serves as Coinbase’s Head of Listings, and works with crypto project teams from all around the world so that their tokens can be bought, sold, and held in the safest way by more than 100 million Coinbase customers.
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