Coinbase’s AI-focused x402 payment protocol is moving toward becoming an open, standardized infrastructure under the Linux Foundation, the nonprofit center for open source software development. The move aims to create a community-governed ecosystem for high-frequency microtransactions that legacy finance cannot handle efficiently.
The protocol has formed an initial governing body, the x402 Foundation, which includes internet services company Cloudflare and payments giant Stripe, with support from a long list of other big players.
Industry interest in X402 comes as AI-powered commerce expands. Especially so-called agent payments, executed autonomously by AI agents, are a hot topic, particularly in certain areas of the crypto industry, where programmable, blockchain-based micropayments are believed to make more sense.
x402 is designed for these payments. Unlike using ChatGPT as an interface to a traditional shopping cart, it can handle transactions worth just fractions of a cent at high frequency, something traditional credit card networks struggle to manage.
Now, by using the Linux Foundation to scale an open source ecosystem, x402 aims to address potential interoperability issues by creating an AI commerce equivalent of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), the standard technology that encrypts the connection between a web server and a browser.
“The Internet was built on open protocols,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. “The x402 Foundation will create an open, community-governed home to develop these capabilities openly, ensuring they evolve with transparency, interoperability, and broad participation across the ecosystem.”
Coinbase said in a press release on Thursday that the foundation’s additional membership will be comprised of participants from multiple verticals with initial intent and support expressed by Adyen, Amazon Web Services, American Express, Ampersend.ai, Ant International, Base, Circle, Fiserv Merchant Solutions, Google, KakaoPay, Mastercard, Merit Systems, Microsoft, Polygon Labs, PPRO, Sierra. Shopify, Solana Foundation, Thirdweb and Visa.
“The shift toward agent commerce requires a cloud infrastructure that is as open as the protocols it supports,” said James Tromans, Managing Director of Web3 and Digital Assets at Google Cloud. By joining the x402 Foundation, Google reinforces its commitment to interoperable standards that enable secure AI-powered transactions across platforms.”
