Coinbase, Google, Stripe Launch x402 Foundation to Build Payment Rails for AI Agents

Coinbase, Cloudflare, Stripe Push to Shape Future of AI Money

Big names in crypto, payments and cloud infrastructure are racing to build the financial plumbing for a world in which AI agents -- not humans -- handle transactions on the internet. Coinbase Global Inc., Cloudflare Inc. and Stripe are forming a nonprofit foundation to govern x402, an open-source protocol that lets software make instant payments without human involvement -- one of at least two competing standards vying to become the default rails for machine-to-machine commerce. An additional 20 companies are joining the foundation as members, including Microsoft Corp., Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Amazon Web Services, American Express Co., and crypto companies like Circle Internet Group Inc., and Solana Foundation. The foundation will be housed under the Linux Foundation, a nonprofit organization that has been long supporting the development of open source software, most notably the Linux kernel. "By moving the x402 protocol under the stewardship of the Linux Foundation, we are ensuring that the future of agentic commerce remains neutral, interoperable, and accessible to everyone," Stephanie Cohen, chief strategy officer at Cloudflare, said in a statement Thursday. The move is the latest in a rapid-fire sequence of bets across the payments and crypto industries on the idea that autonomous software programs will soon need to pay for data, computing power and services millions of times a day -- and that today's payment systems, built for people with credit cards, aren't designed to handle it. Right now, when a consumer buys something online, the payment passes through a chain of intermediaries -- the merchant's bank, the card network, the card-issuing bank -- each taking a cut of the transaction. The protocol is named after a piece of the internet's original architecture that sat dormant for three decades. When engineers wrote the rules for how computers communicate, they set aside a status code -- 402, "Payment Required" -- for a future in which machines could pay for things directly. That future never materialized. Coinbase launched x402 last May to finally put the code to work, letting apps, bots and AI agents charge and settle on the spot using mostly stablecoins. The x402 protocol has processed about 97 million transactions through Coinbase's Base blockchain, according to data compiled by Artemis Analytics, though blockchain data suggests daily activity remains modest -- roughly 54,900 daily transactions earlier this week, yet without knowing whether they were used for testing or live commerce. A rival effort has also emerged from Stripe and the crypto venture firm Paradigm, which recently launched a competing standard called the Machine Payments Protocol alongside Tempo, a blockchain the two firms co-built for stablecoin settlements. Stripe has integrated x402, effectively positioning itself on both sides of the race. Tempo raised $500 million last October. Read: Stripe and Paradigm Open Tempo Blockchain to Public, Add Kalshi, UBS as PartnersBloomberg Terminal The two approaches are similar with some different strengths. With MPP, an AI agent can open a pre-paid session with a merchant. When thousands of micropayments take places, there's no need to get a new approval each time. Meanwhile, x402 has a strong focus on blockchain-based payment rails. Get the Markets Daily newsletter. Get the Markets Daily newsletter. Get the Markets Daily newsletter. What's happening in stocks, bonds, currencies and commodities right now. What's happening in stocks, bonds, currencies and commodities right now. What's happening in stocks, bonds, currencies and commodities right now. Plus Signed UpPlus Sign UpPlus Sign Up By continuing, I agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. Both camps have assembled broad coalitions. Tempo's design partners include Visa Inc., Mastercard Inc., OpenAI, Anthropic and Deutsche Bank. Visa and Mastercard have begun investing heavily to ensure they remain central to whatever comes next. Visa has extended its network to support stablecoin settlements. Mastercard agreed last month to acquire stablecoin infrastructure startup BVNK for $1.8 billion. Stripe had already acquired stablecoin startup Bridge and crypto wallet firm Privy. The underlying expectation driving all of this: payments between software agents will be high-frequency, low-value and global, in a pattern that fits poorly with card networks charging elevated interchange fees. In a world where software optimizes for cost, those fees become an obvious target. That logic rattled markets in February. A research note from Citrini Research imagining AI agents bypassing card networks for cheaper stablecoin-based settlements sent stocks of payment giants tumbling in a single session. Read: Stablecoin Firms Bet Big on AI Agent Payments That Barely ExistBloomberg Terminal The regulatory backdrop has shifted to accommodate the push. The GENIUS Act, signed into law last July, created the first US federal framework for stablecoins, requiring issuers to back every coin one-for-one with dollars and submit to government oversight. Cloudflare has announced plans for NET Dollar, its own dollar-backed stablecoin for automated transactions between AI agents, though it has not yet launched. For now, the competition is less about which protocol is technically superior than about which one signs up the most developers, platforms and enterprise partners first. The standard that becomes the default for AI agent payments could end up as foundational to machine commerce as card networks have been to human spending -- or it could remain a niche experiment if the vision of billions of autonomous software transactions fails to materialize at the scale its backers expect. "By backing the x402 Foundation, we're helping build the native payment layer the internet has never had - one that's global, programmable, and always on," said Shan Aggarwal, chief business officer at Coinbase.

Coinbase Links Up With Linux Foundation to Launch x402 Foundation - Decrypt

Companies including Google, Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, Shopify, and Cloudflare are participating. Coinbase is joining with the Linux Foundation to launch the x402 Foundation, an industry group created to oversee the development of a new internet payments standard. The foundation will steward the x402 protocol, which lets websites request and receive payments as part of normal web traffic, after Coinbase contributed the technology to the Linux Foundation to place it under neutral governance. "The internet was built on open protocols," Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin said in a statement. "The x402 Foundation will create an open, community-governed home to develop these capabilities in the open, ensuring they evolve with transparency, interoperability, and broad participation across the ecosystem." Under Linux Foundation governance, the x402 protocol will remain vendor-neutral, the Linux Foundation said, allowing for "transparent, community-driven growth, ensuring accessibility, and supporting sustainability." Erik Reppel, head of engineering for the Coinbase Developer Platform, said Coinbase will remain involved as a founding participant while the foundation manages development of the technology. "Coinbase is a founding member and the original creator of the protocol," Reppel told Decrypt. "Both Coinbase and Base are part of the initial set of industry participants supporting the foundation's migration to an open-source model. Members will help with governance to help guide the future of x402." Launched in 2025 by Coinbase's developer platform, x402 revived the long-unused HTTP 402 "Payment Required" status code to create a native payment layer for the web, allowing websites and APIs to request payment directly during normal HTTP interactions before granting access to content or services. Developers have begun experimenting with the protocol as AI agents increasingly perform tasks for users online. Projects, including Sam Altman's World, are integrating x402 into tools that let agents prove they represent real people, and infrastructure efforts like MoonPay's Open Wallet Standard are adding support for the protocol. Companies participating in the launch of the x402 foundation include Google, Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, Shopify, Cloudflare, and the Solana Foundation. "The shift toward agentic commerce requires cloud infrastructure that is as open as the protocols it supports," Managing Director, Web3 and Digital Assets at Google Cloud, James Tromans, said in a statement. "By joining the x402 Foundation, Google is reinforcing its commitment to interoperable standards that enable secure, AI-driven transactions across platforms." "Solana has been one of the earliest adopters of x402, driving nearly 65% of x402 transaction volume this year, and has a growing ecosystem building products with x402 payments," Head of AI Growth, Solana Foundation, Rishin Sharma said in a statement. "We're eager to support the x402 Foundation to build the future of agentic payments and onboard more developers, merchants, and agents to pay-per-request models with stablecoins." The x402 Foundation will operate under Linux Foundation governance to support community-driven development of the standard. Organizations that contribute to or use the technology can join the foundation and help guide its development. Early priorities include maintaining interoperability across implementations and supporting developers and merchants building services around the standard. Shan Aggarwal, chief business officer at Coinbase, said the company views the project as an effort to create a more open infrastructure for the future of online payments. "Agents are going to buy, sell, and transact on our behalf. They will need a payment rail that's open, interoperable, and doesn't require a human clicking confirm purchase," Aggarwal told Decrypt. "That's x402, and now it's governed by the community."

Big Tech Companies Form New x402 Foundation For Agentic AI

The x402 protocol won't be owned by a single entity, with the Linux Foundation serving as the agentic AI protocol's "neutral, non-profit home," Coinbase said. Google, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services are among the Big Tech firms named as founding members of the newly launched x402 Foundation, established to govern and standardize the x402 protocol for agentic AI payments on crypto and fiat rails. The x402 Foundation was launched on Thursday by the open-source software development non-profit Linux Foundation with the help of Coinbase, the creators of the x402 protocol. Other founding members of the x402 Foundation include American Express, Mastercard, Visa, Cloudflare, Shopify, Stripe, Circle, Base, Polygon Labs, Solana Foundation, Thirdweb and KakaoPay. "The internet was built on open protocols," Jim Zemlin, CEO of the Linux Foundation, said on Thursday, as he explained why the x402 protocol should adopt an open-source structure. Launching the x402 protocol under the Linux Foundation gives it a "neutral, nonprofit home," said Coinbase. It could help attract more support from tech firms and developers than if it were launched under a company banner. The Linux Foundation is considered one of the largest and most influential open-source software nonprofits in the world. The move comes amid a broad industry belief that AI agents could become the dominant users of blockchain payments in the coming years. "There will be more AI agents transacting online than humans very soon," Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said, echoing comments from Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire in January that "literally billions of AI agents" will be transacting onchain in three to five years. Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao also said in January that crypto is the "native currency for AI agents," which will handle everything from buying tickets to paying bills without credit cards. Related: How AI agents can reshape arbitrage in prediction markets For blockchain payments, the x402 protocol uses the HTTP 402 "Payment Required" status and Ethereum Improvement Proposal 3009, a pre-signed authorization feature, to enable the AI agents to transfer funds automatically without manual approval or paying gas fees. Transaction activity for the x402 protocol peaked in November last year but quietened down in 2026, Dune Analytics data shows. A peak of 13.7 million transactions was observed between the week of Nov. 4-10, followed by another 13.66 million transactions the following week. However, transaction activity has fallen sharply since then, with weekly transactions falling between 29,000 and 1.1 million.