Coinbase, among others, filled that gap in May 2025. Under x402, a server wanting payment responds to a request with a 402 and a price. The client signs a stablecoin transfer, usually USDC, resends the request with the payment attached, and gets the data. The exchange takes seconds and requires no account, no card and no previous relationship between the two sides.
This is why the AI industry cares. A standalone agent cannot open a bank account, pass a credit check, or sign a SaaS contract, but can sign a transaction. Google has coupled x402 to its own agent payment protocol, and Cloudflare ships it in its agent toolkit.
The announcement contained no usage figures, although x402 publishes them on its own website. The protocol handled about 75 million transactions over the past 30 days, or about 29 every second, moving about $24 million between about 94,000 buyers and 22,000 sellers.
That equates to an average payment of around 32 cents, meaning the machine-to-machine thesis is working as designed, as no card network can process such small fees profitably.
Still, $24 million a month is a fraction of what any of x402’s leading members move in a day.
