Coinbase, among others, filled that gap in May 2025. Under x402, a server that wants payment answers 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 needs no account, no card, and no prior relationship between the two sides.

That is why the AI industry cares. An autonomous agent cannot open a bank account, pass a credit check or sign a SaaS contract, but can sign a transaction. Google has wired x402 into its own agent payments protocol, and Cloudflare ships it in its agent toolkit.

The announcement included no usage figures, though x402 publishes them on its own homepage. The protocol handled about 75 million transactions over the past 30 days, or roughly 29 every second, moving about $24 million between some 94,000 buyers and 22,000 sellers.

That works out to an average payment of about 32 cents, meaning the machine-to-machine thesis works as designed, as no card network can process a such small charges profitably.

Still, $24 million a month is a fraction of what any of x402’s premier members move in a day.