Coinbase, among others, filled that gap in May 2025. Under x402, a server that wants a payment responds to a request with a 402 and a price. The client signs a stablecoin transfer, usually USDC, forwards the request with the payment attached, and obtains the data. The exchange takes a few seconds and does not require an account, card, or prior relationship between the two parties.
That’s why it matters to the AI industry. A freelance agent can’t open a bank account, pass a credit check, or sign a SaaS contract, but they can sign a transaction. Google has connected x402 to its own agent payments protocol and Cloudflare includes it in its agent toolkit.
The announcement did not include usage figures, although x402 publishes them on its own home page. The protocol handled about 75 million transactions in the last 30 days, or about 29 per second, moving about $24 million between about 94,000 buyers and 22,000 sellers.
That equates to an average payment of about 32 cents, which means the machine-to-machine thesis works as designed, since no card network can process charges that small profitably.
Still, $24 million a month is a fraction of what any of x402’s top members make in a day.
