Coinbase is resurrecting a long-buried protocol for sending payments over the Internet to create an agentic payments layer that requires no human intervention.<\/p>\n
Editorial<\/p>\n
This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community.<\/p>\n
HTTP 402 ‘Payment Required’ has been a part of the internet\u2019s blueprint for decades, but it was never used.<\/p>\n
Coinbase’s new x402 protocol turns this 402 status code into a real payment layer \u2014 letting any server request payment, and any client (human or agent) respond with digital dollars in the form of stablecoins like USDC.<\/p>\n
The firm notes that traditional payment rails, such as credit cards, bank transfers and subscriptions, were built for a pre-internet world and are riddled with manual steps that make it difficult for AI agents to act alone. <\/p>\n
“By enabling the API and context providers to monetize without requiring human-in the loop configuration, x402 removes a key bottleneck to agentic autonomy,” states the company. “Agents can now pay per API call \u2014 no human intervention, and no more managing payments for each integration.”<\/p>\n
The head of engineering at Coinbase Developer Platform, Erik Reppel, says: \u201cWe\u2019re laying the groundwork for an economy run not just by people, but by software \u2014 autonomous, intelligent, and always on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coinbase is not alone in looking to create an autonomous payment layer for agentic commerce, with Visa, Stripe<\/a>, Mastercard and PayPal<\/a> all recently introducing their own models for capitalising on the rise of AI.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coinbase is resurrecting a long-buried protocol for sending payments over the Internet to create an agentic payments layer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81569,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3161],"tags":[3670,3427,3210,3674,51,3678,3677,3676,3671,474,3240,3668,3672,13,3680,3082,1197,3673,2998,547,12,3669,3209,3679,363,1199,326,53,1201,3675,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-81568","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-bank","9":"tag-banking","10":"tag-blockchain","11":"tag-breaking","12":"tag-business","13":"tag-challenger","14":"tag-digital","15":"tag-execution","16":"tag-fin","17":"tag-finance","18":"tag-financial","19":"tag-finextra","20":"tag-fintech","21":"tag-headlines","22":"tag-insurtech","23":"tag-internet","24":"tag-investment","25":"tag-it","26":"tag-latest","27":"tag-mobile","28":"tag-news","29":"tag-online","30":"tag-payments","31":"tag-regtech","32":"tag-retail","33":"tag-services","34":"tag-tech","35":"tag-technology","36":"tag-trade","37":"tag-transaction","38":"tag-uk","39":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114466019256715796","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}