The largest players in global financial infrastructure — from Visa and Mastercard to Ripple and Stripe — have officially supported the launch of a unified standard for automatic payments between software agents. This refers to the x402 protocol, which has now been placed under the management of the Linux Foundation and already unites 40 participants. This is not just another initiative — it is the foundation for an economy where AI agents can independently pay for services, API requests, and computing resources without human involvement.
What is x402 and why it matters
The x402 protocol embeds secure transaction mechanisms directly into HTTP interactions. Essentially, it is a universal payment layer for the internet that allows agents, applications, and APIs to conduct financial operations as easily as they exchange data. The key difference from existing solutions is neutrality. The x402 Foundation, operating under the auspices of the Linux Foundation, ensures that the standard will not be tied to a single provider or payment network.
Among the premier participants, in addition to the aforementioned giants, are American Express, Adyen, Fiserv, Shopify, Google, Amazon Web Services, Cloudflare, Circle, MoonPay, as well as the Solana and Stellar ecosystem funds. Regular members include Fireblocks, Polygon Labs, NEAR Foundation, and even World Liberty Financial. This composition speaks for itself: the industry is ready for a unified standard.
Market voices
At Coinbase, where, incidentally, x402 was born, they emphasize that AI agents have so far lacked a "native and secure" way to pay. Lincoln Murr, head of the exchange's AI products, directly stated that the protocol solves a real compatibility problem. At Circle, they highlight speed: in combination with USDC and x402, transactions are completed in seconds and cost fractions of a cent.
Markus Infanger, Senior Vice President at RippleX, reported that support for x402 has already been implemented on the XRP Ledger, allowing agents to conduct transactions in XRP and the RLUSD stablecoin. Visa and Mastercard see this as a natural continuation of their strategy to scale machine payments — through services like Agent Pay for Machines. And at Stripe, they announced the creation of an economic infrastructure where businesses can accept payments from agents, and the agents themselves become full-fledged participants in the economy.
Stephanie Cohen from Cloudflare sums it up: 40 participants in such a short time is the best proof of how overdue a "secure and native" payment layer for the internet is.
My expert opinion: The launch of x402 under the Linux Foundation is perhaps the most significant step toward real cryptocurrency utility in the past year. If the standard is widely adopted, we will witness explosive growth in microtransactions and fully autonomous commerce. The key risk is fragmentation, but the composition of participants inspires confidence that competitors will be able to agree on common rules of the game.