The Linux Foundation announced the formation of the x402 Foundation as a neutral home for the x402 protocol, which was previously developed by Coinbase, Cloudflare, and Stripe, aiming to help establish community-based innovation in open payments.
Why the x402 Protocol Matters
The x402 Protocol is important because it enables payments to be integrated natively into web interactions. Rather than requiring separate checkout flows or manual approvals, x402 allows an AI agent, an Application Programming Interface (API), or a web app to include a payment directly within a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) request, settling in stablecoins or other digital currencies in real time.
This is particularly important for a new and sustainable agentic economy, where autonomous software will need to transact by themselves, like paying for compute, data, and services at machine speed.
Founding supporters of the x402 Protocol foundation include a wide variety of tech and financial organisations: Adyen, Amazon Web Services (AWS), American Express, Base, Circle, Cloudflare, Coinbase, Fiserv, Google, KakaoPay, Mastercard, Microsoft, Polygon Labs, Shopify, Solana Foundation, Stripe, thirdweb, and Visa.
The governance of the x402 Foundation will be performed openly and transparently in order to guarantee complete interoperability between all x402-compatible systems and products, and neutrality (regardless of who makes them).
Coinbase’s Shan Aggarwal said the protocol moves “toward a more open financial system where sending value online is as simple as sending an email.” Solana Foundation’s Rishin Sharma noted that “Solana already drives nearly 65% of x402 transaction volume, demonstrating real‑world traction.”
What Happens Next?
Through the governance of the Linux Foundation, the x402 protocol will be developed by the community and available for use by anyone wishing to participate. The foundation will concentrate on creating developer tools and integration standards, as well as promoting cross-chain payments to make “payments over HTTP” a standard built-in feature.
