The x402 Foundation launches with 40 members including Mastercard, Visa, AWS, and Coinbase to create an open payment standard for AI agents and autonomous commerce.
Forty organizations, including Mastercard, Visa, Stripe, Coinbase, AWS, and Google, have formed the x402 Foundation to build an open payment standard for AI agents. The Linux Foundation announced the launch Tuesday, saying the group will develop a vendor-neutral protocol that lets developers, financial institutions, and cloud providers shape how machines pay each other over the internet.
Founding members span payments, cloud infrastructure, and blockchain. The 17 premier members include Adyen, American Express, Circle, Cloudflare, Fiserv, Monad Foundation, MoonPay, Ripple, Shopify, Solana Foundation, and Stellar Development Foundation alongside the names above.
“The operational launch of the x402 Foundation marks a vital milestone in establishing an open, community-governed standard for payments over HTTP,” Linux Foundation CEO Jim Zemlin said in the release. “By bringing together leading companies across finance, technology and more, we’re ensuring that the payment layer of the internet remains neutral, highly interoperable and ready to support digital commerce.”
Coinbase created the x402 protocol in May 2025. It uses the original HTTP “402 Payment Required” status code to embed stablecoin payments into web interactions. The company said the approach would let autonomous AI agents make instant, frictionless payments without intermediaries.
In April, Coinbase and the Linux Foundation said the protocol would move to the nonprofit. Tuesday’s announcement formalized the governance body. Coinbase Head of AI Product Lincoln Murr said: “Moving the protocol to the Linux Foundation, with dozens of members spanning every corner of internet payments and infrastructure, is how open technology earns lasting trust across an industry. We look forward to building out x402 further with the community.”
The protocol’s design targets agentic commerce – scenarios where software agents negotiate and settle transactions autonomously. Mastercard, one of the founding members, has been expanding its own blockchain-based payment rails, and the x402 standard could complement those efforts by providing a common layer for machine-to-machine payments.
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