x402 protocol breakthrough path! Google and Visa bet on the $30 trillion AI payment market

In the encryption industry, most new concepts typically go through three stages: hype, infrastructure development, and mainstream adoption. x402 is a protocol developed by a US compliance exchange, specifically designed for AI agent payments, allowing AI agents to easily complete payments and access paid resources through the Blockchain without human intervention.

x402 protocol technical principles and core advantages

x402 is an open payment protocol developed by a US compliance encryption exchange, aimed at enabling artificial intelligence (AI) agents to autonomously complete payments and transactions without human intervention. x402 allows AI agents to use stablecoins across multiple Blockchain payment services and offers the advantage of instant settlement, avoiding complex processes like account creation, subscriptions, or API keys. HTTP 402 is a status code indicating “Payment Required,” but has been rarely used for a long time. x402 leverages HTTP 402, so that when an AI agent sends an API request, the server returns the HTTP 402 status code, indicating that payment is required.

When the AI agent attempts to access paid services (such as news articles, APIs, or data), the server returns an HTTP 402 Payment Required status code, and the response includes information such as payment method, payment amount, and the recipient's wallet address. Based on the information provided by the server, the AI agent generates a transaction for the specified amount, adds a digital signature, and sends it back to the server. The server passes the payment information to a “Facilitator,” which verifies the payment and processes the transaction on the Blockchain. Once the payment is completed, the server grants the AI agent access to the services.

The importance of x402 lies not only in providing a payment standard for AI agents. Since payments are made using stablecoins on the Blockchain, it enables micropayment functionalities that were previously unattainable, allowing AI agents to call APIs or payment services in real-time based on usage. Furthermore, x402 also allows human users to bypass complex processes such as API key management or account creation, granting direct access to content based on micropayments.

Web2 giants fully adopt to promote infrastructure phase

x402 was first launched in May 2025, initially receiving limited attention. However, after being mentioned in a16zcrypto's report “2025 Cryptocurrency Status: The Year Cryptocurrency Goes Mainstream,” x402 began to gain significant attention. According to Gartner data, the agentic commerce market is expected to reach $30 trillion by 2030, and a16z points out that x402 could become the main payment channel for AI agents.

Unlike typical encryption narratives, x402 has attracted the attention of many large Web2 tech companies, which are actively adopting this protocol. Cloudflare is a company that provides network infrastructure and security solutions, and it recently launched the “Agents SDK” service to help developers easily create and deploy AI agents. Cloudflare co-founded the x402 Foundation with a U.S. compliance encryption exchange and supports x402 in its “Agents SDK” service, enabling AI agents to easily make online payments. Notably, Cloudflare recently introduced a USD stablecoin called NET Dollar, designed specifically for AI agents.

Vercel is a cloud platform company aimed at helping developers quickly build and deploy web applications. Recently, Vercel launched services such as “Vercel AI SDK” and “Vercel MCP,” enabling developers to easily build and deploy AI agents. In September this year, Vercel released x402-mcp, allowing AI agents to automatically handle payment transactions when accessing paid APIs or resources through MCP.

Adopt the top enterprise list of x402:

Cloudflare: Co-founded x402 Foundation｜Launched NET Dollar stablecoin｜Agents SDK integration

Google Cloud: A2A protocol integration x402 | AP2 payment engine | multi-agent collaborative payment

Anthropic: Claude MCP supports x402 | Automatic processing of paid tool payments

Visa: Trusted Agent Protocol | Co-developed with Cloudflare | Verifying Agent Trustworthiness

Others: Circle, AWS, etc. are also collaborating with x402.

Google Cloud has launched the A2A protocol, which enables AI agents to communicate and collaborate with each other. The A2A protocol includes an extended feature called AP2 (Agentic Payments Protocol), which allows agents to autonomously complete payments. x402 is integrated into this system as the payment engine for AI agents to carry out actual transactions. Anthropic is a well-known artificial intelligence company whose Claude LLM supports users in building AI agent services. Claude MCP supports x402, allowing Claude to automatically handle payment transactions when accessing paid MCP tools.

Visa, as the world's largest card payment network, recently announced the launch of the “Trusted Agent Protocol,” developed jointly by Visa and Cloudflare. This protocol is used to verify whether the requests of AI agents in agency business activities are trustworthy and supports completing payments through x402. According to announcements from US Compliance encryption exchanges, other companies such as Circle and AWS are also collaborating with x402.

$920,000 trading volume and the huge gap of a 30 trillion market

According to data from x402scan, there are currently about 55,000 buyers sending approximately 879,000 transactions to around 1,000 sellers. These numbers look impressive, but the total transaction amount is only about 923,000 USD. This indicates that x402 still has a long way to go before entering the popularization stage. The gap from 920,000 USD to 30 trillion USD is a tremendous challenge that x402 needs to overcome in the future.

Consumer psychology and trust structures are the biggest barriers. According to Accenture's survey of financial institutions, 87% of respondents believe that customer distrust of AI payments is an issue, and 78% of respondents express concerns about unauthorized payments or fraud involving AI robots. Even the latest LLMs (large language models) sometimes provide incorrect information or less-than-ideal answers, making it psychologically difficult for consumers to trust AI agents based on these models to handle payment transactions.

The second factor is the current state of enterprise infrastructure. According to Accenture's data, 85% of financial institutions report that their existing traditional systems are inadequate for handling large-scale agency payments. In particular, the lack of systems to address fraudulent transactions in agency payments is one of the main barriers to entering this field. Overall, to enable x402 to enter the popularization stage, companies need to build systems specifically optimized for agency business and cultivate consumer trust in these systems.

x402 Strategic Value Brought by Blockchain

According to Gartner's prediction, by 2030, AI agents will influence $30 trillion in purchasing behavior. While the AI agent payment market is still in its early stages, it is encouraging that x402 seems to be establishing itself as the industry standard. This aligns with the fact that major IT companies such as Google, Anthropic, and Cloudflare are adopting x402 for AI agent payments.

x402 brings a clear added value to the Blockchain industry, as all AI agent payments will be conducted on the Blockchain network. Currently, most transactions occur on the Base network, with some transactions taking place on Solana, but x402 is designed to be blockchain-agnostic, meaning it can be used on any network. This indicates that as the x402 ecosystem expands, payments will take place across multiple networks, driven by the demand and supply of buyers and sellers.

Agentic commerce represents an inevitable and enormous market of the future, and all payments will ultimately circulate through x402 on the Blockchain. This will mark the moment when the Blockchain finds its second global Product-Market Fit (PMF) after stablecoins. The strategic significance of this far exceeds x402 itself; it may redefine the role of Blockchain in the global economy.

Recently, the sharp rise in prices of tokens related to x402, such as $VIRTUAL increasing by 40% within two days, shows that the market is full of expectations for this track. However, a highly probable prediction is that the soaring prices of these tokens may be difficult to maintain in the long term. Since the rise of encryption and AI fields, this concept has gradually evolved into a meaningful domain, but many small project tokens and meme tokens that soared in the early hype phase have shown disappointing price performance over time. The real value will be concentrated in projects that provide practical infrastructure and services rather than purely hype.