x402 Protocol Sees 10,780% Transaction Surge, Poised to Reshape Internet Payments

San Francisco, CA – The x402 protocol, an open payment standard developed by Coinbase, has seen an exponential 10,780% surge in transaction volume, signaling a significant shift in how digital payments, particularly for AI agents, are conducted online. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong recently highlighted the protocol's potential, stating in a tweet, "x402 lets you attach a stablecoin payment to any web request. We think this will be a big part of the new internet."

The x402 protocol revives the long-dormant HTTP 402 "Payment Required" status code, transforming it into a functional mechanism for instant, programmatic stablecoin payments directly over HTTP. This innovation allows services to monetize APIs and digital content on-chain, enabling both human users and AI agents to pay for access without traditional accounts, sessions, or complex authentication processes. The system primarily facilitates fee-free USDC payments on the Base network through the Coinbase Developer Platform's x402 Facilitator service.

Designed for a modern internet economy, x402 addresses limitations of legacy payment systems by reducing fees and friction, enabling micropayments, and facilitating machine-to-machine transactions. Erik Reppel, Head of Engineering at Coinbase Developer Platform and co-author of the x402 whitepaper, explained, "Just like HTTPS secured the web, x402 could define the next era of the internet; one where value moves as freely and instantly as information." This allows AI agents to autonomously pay for API access and other services.

The protocol's recent explosive growth, with nearly 500,000 transactions processed between October 14-20, 2025, and a peak of 239,505 transactions in a single day, underscores its rapid adoption. This surge is largely attributed to the growing demand for efficient, AI-enhanced payment solutions and the ease with which developers can integrate x402, often in less than 20 minutes. Industry reports, including one from a16z, project a $30 trillion payment market for agentic commerce by 2030, with crypto potentially being the only viable payment rail for AI agents.

Major players like Cloudflare and Google are also integrating x402 into their infrastructure. Cloudflare plans to use x402 to enable pay-per-crawl functionality across its network, which hosts approximately 20% of the internet. Google has incorporated x402-based crypto payment extensions into its Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), positioning it as a potential default settlement layer for agent economies across its services. This broad industry support suggests x402 is on a path toward becoming a foundational component for native machine-to-machine transactions on the internet, unlocking new monetization models for content creators and developers.