# What Is x402? How AI Agents Pay With Crypto

- URL: https://talkfuse.com/story/what-is-x402-how-ai-agents-pay-with-crypto/
- Published: 2026-11-04T17:59:09+00:00
- Updated: 2026-11-05T05:55:58+00:00
- Original publisher: Decrypt
- Original article: https://decrypt.co/resources/what-is-x402-how-ai-agents-pay-with-crypto
- Topics: AI, Business, Crypto, Software, Technology

## Key points

- x402 lets software pay for web services as part of a request.
- It mainly uses USDC, with low-cost settlement on Base.
- The standard has no official cryptocurrency of its own.

## Summary

x402 is an open standard that lets websites and services charge for access through ordinary web requests, with payments made in cryptocurrency. It aims to let AI agents pay automatically for individual API calls and other services, addressing a gap in web payments as more software acts online on users’ behalf.

Coinbase launched x402 in May 2025, and the Linux Foundation’s vendor-neutral x402 Foundation now oversees it. Payments are mostly in USDC and commonly settle on Base, where transactions take seconds and cost well under a cent; the standard also supports other blockchains and card payments. By 1 November 2026, it had processed more than 196 million transactions across 12 chains, settling over $42 million, though activity has cooled since a late-2025 trading surge. x402 is a protocol, not a cryptocurrency, and has no official native token.

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Summarised by TalkFuse (https://talkfuse.com/). Quote the original publisher for the reporting and link this page for the summary and discussion.