Updated
Updated · CoinDesk · Jul 14
Visa, Stripe, Google Back 40-Member x402 Foundation for AI Agent Payments
Updated
Updated · CoinDesk · Jul 14

Visa, Stripe, Google Back 40-Member x402 Foundation for AI Agent Payments

3 articles · Updated · CoinDesk · Jul 14

Summary

  • Premier members including Visa, Stripe and Google have joined the 40-member x402 Foundation, which is now operational to build an open payment standard for AI agents over HTTP.
  • The protocol, originally developed by Coinbase, is meant to let agents, machines and users make direct payments—including micropayments—without subscriptions or manually entering card details.
  • The foundation has set up a technical steering committee and started searching for an executive director as it tries to keep AI-driven commerce from being locked into proprietary payment ecosystems.
  • Backers including Mastercard, American Express, AWS, Shopify and Cloudflare argue an open standard could revive the web’s long-unused 402 payment concept and shift online business models beyond ads and subscriptions.

Insights

With giants like Visa and Google backing an open payment standard, is the era of proprietary payment networks officially over?
As AI agents begin to autonomously transact trillions, who is legally liable when these automated payments inevitably go wrong?
Could this protocol finally kill the subscription model, creating a true pay-per-use internet for everything from news to APIs?

x402 Protocol Processes 119M+ Transactions: Linux Foundation Launches Universal Standard for AI-Driven Machine Payments

Overview

In July 2026, the Linux Foundation launched the x402 Foundation, introducing the x402 protocol as a universal payments standard for digital commerce. Originally developed at Coinbase, x402 was designed to solve the problem that AI agents lacked a native, interoperable way to pay for services. By contributing x402 to the Linux Foundation, the protocol gained a vendor-neutral home, which is essential for building trust and encouraging industry-wide adoption. This strategic move aims to establish x402 as the foundation for seamless, machine-to-machine payments, enabling AI agents and APIs to transact easily and securely across platforms.

...