Today, Coinbase announced its plans 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, the companies aim to unlock the full potential of agentic commerce, enabling seamless, autonomous transactions between AI agents, businesses, and users.
The x402 protocol is changing 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.
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.
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 be co-founded by Coinbase and Cloudflare, with additional members to be announced.
Coinbase commented:
“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”.
