x402 Foundation Advances Open-Source Payment Standard for AI Agents

Cloudflare said non-human entities such as crawlers and AI agents now account for more than half of internet traffic, while AI crawlers visit websites far more frequently than people do. As agents gain the ability to search, make decisions and purchase autonomously, they are disrupting an online economy built around advertising, subscriptions and human-operated checkout. Websites urgently need a common standard for verifying identities and collecting payments.

Cloudflare Chief Strategy Officer Stephanie Cohen recently said the company was integrating the x402 protocol and working with Visa and Experian to build a payment stack for AI agents. Drawing on the HTTP 402 “Payment Required” concept, x402 allows agents to complete verification and payment when accessing content or services. No transaction amount, formal launch date or pricing has been announced.

Developed by Coinbase, x402 uses the HTTP “402 Payment Required” status code to let AI agents, APIs and applications initiate card or stablecoin payments directly. It addresses the high costs and cumbersome processes traditional financial systems face when handling high-frequency micropayments, while reducing the risk of vendor lock-in through an open standard.

Coinbase and Cloudflare proposed establishing a foundation on September 23, 2025. The Linux Foundation announced that it would take over stewardship of the protocol on April 2, 2026, with support from 23 companies at the time. The x402 Foundation formally began operations on July 14, with membership rising to 40 companies, including Google, AWS, Stripe, Visa and Mastercard. Officials did not disclose funding or transaction volumes.