# HTTP Payments Protocol (x402) x402 is an open protocol that puts **payments inside the HTTP request cycle**, reviving the reserved-since-1997 status code `402 Payment Required`. A server answers a request with 402 plus a price; the client (typically an [[AI Agents|AI agent]]) attaches a stablecoin payment and retries; the server delivers. Two to four seconds end to end, settling for under $0.001 per transaction — no accounts, no subscriptions, no percentage fees. The design target is machine-to-machine commerce: agents buying API calls, content, and compute per request, at volumes and denominations card rails can't price. ## Governance Created by Coinbase (May 2025). Coinbase and [[Cloudflare]] announced the **x402 Foundation** in September 2025, formalized under the [[Linux Foundation]] in April 2026 — with 22 launch members including AWS, Google, Microsoft, Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Shopify, Circle, and the Solana Foundation. The incumbents joining a micropayments standard is the tell: they expect agentic commerce to route around checkout pages. ## Adoption, honestly read By late April 2026: 69,000 active agents, 165M transactions, ~$50M cumulative volume — but real-commerce volume around $28K/day with roughly half the activity gamified. Settlement concentrated ~85% on Base. So: infrastructure and governance are real and well-backed; organic demand is still small. The rails are ahead of the trains. [[Cloudflare Wallets]] is the flagship implementation — funded wallets, spending guardrails, and agent identity built directly on x402 — and Cloudflare and AWS both embed x402 handling at the edge. ## References - [x402 Website](https://www.x402.org) - [x402 Foundation announcement](https://www.coinbase.com/blog/coinbase-and-cloudflare-will-launch-x402-foundation) - [Cloudflare and AWS edge support (InfoQ)](https://www.infoq.com/news/2026/07/cloudflare-aws-x402-micropayment/) ## Related - [[Cloudflare Wallets]] — wallet + identity layer on these rails - [[AI Agents]] — the intended payer - [[Cloudflare]] · [[Linux Foundation]] - [[Agentic Resource Discovery Specification (ARD)]] — discovery is the sibling problem to payment