Coinbase has released a significant upgrade to its x402 payment protocol, designed to facilitate autonomous machine-to-machine transactions. The x402 V2 protocol provides a range of innovative features, including multi-chain routing, wallet sessions, and discovery, enabling AI agents and web services to process HTTP-402 payments across both crypto and legacy payment rails.
Introduction to x402 V2
The x402 V2 standardizes network and asset IDs, allowing a single payment format to operate across multiple blockchains, such as Base and Solana, as well as traditional payment systems like ACH and card networks. This design positions x402 as a unified payment layer for both cryptocurrencies and legacy financial infrastructures. The protocol has already processed over 100 million payments through APIs, AI agents, and web services since its initial deployment six months ago.
Key Features of x402 V2
The upgrade introduces several key features, including wallet-based sessions that enable subscription-style access and repeated use of purchased resources without restarting the payment flow. This feature is intended to reduce overhead for high-frequency workloads, such as large language model inference, automated API calls, and autonomous agent operations, by avoiding unnecessary on-chain interactions. Sessions are tied to wallet ownership, rather than API keys, providing an additional layer of security and control.
The x402 V2 protocol also creates a separation between clients, servers, and intermediaries, allowing developers to add new blockchains, assets, and payment schemes as isolated modules without changing the foundation of the protocol. A new discovery extension enables x402-enabled services to expose metadata that moderators can crawl and index, allowing AI agents to automatically discover services, understand pricing, and initiate payments.
Industry Support and Development
The x402 protocol uses the HTTP 402: Payment Required status code as the payment mechanism, with transactions typically settled via stablecoins on Layer 2 networks like Base. The x402 Foundation, founded in September 2025, includes members such as Cloudflare, Google, and Visa, who support the development of the protocol as an open standard. Reference software development kits have been rewritten with a plug-in-driven architecture, based on feedback from early adopters who have implemented x402 in production environments.
For more information on the x402 V2 protocol and its potential applications, visit the official announcement at https://crypto.news/coinbase-backed-x402-v2-links-base-solana-and-cards-for-ai-native-payments/
