The x402 standard is an open, web-native payment system from Coinbase and Cloudflare, that builds ontop of the HTTP 402 “Payment Required” status code to enable seamless payments directly within web traffic.
Instead of redirecting users to checkout pages or requiring complex interactions, x402 allows applications and AI agents to send small onchain payments, such as stablecoins or even HBAR tokens, as easily as making a standard HTTP request.
Designed with micropayments in mind, x402 enables automated, low-value transactions for APIs, data access, AI tasks, and digital services.
A facilitator verifies and submits transactions onchain, often covering all the gas fees, reducing operational complexity for merchants involved.
The model also supports multiple networks and payment schemes, and is already being implemented across networks including Hedera and Algorand, with Algorand being one of the first to adopt x402 natively.
For Hedera, x402 aligns closely with the Hashgraph network’s strengths like fast finality, low, predictable fees, and the Hashgraph consensus.
By combining protocol-level payments with Hedera’s accounts and allowance features, web3 devs can create new types of controlled payment flows that AI agents and autonomous agents can use.
As reflected in a new Hedera Hashgraph blog post, the x402 payment standard, created by Coinabse and co, opens new use cases such as pay-per-call APIs, tokenized data marketplaces, machine-to-machine interactions, and AI agents able to operate within predefined spending limits.
Hedera’s predictable fee structure makes micropayments realistically viable at a large scale, while its account model allows devs to create multiple wallets for automated systems that need it.
As AI agents and crypto start to merge, x402 payments are beocming a more serous debate and feature that more layer 1 networks may soon adopt at a large scale, with competion.
The post What Are x402 Payments? first appeared on AllinCrypto.
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