AI is already changing how people find and buy things online, comparing prices and narrowing down options in seconds. However, giving AI agents permission to actually buy something is a more complicated problem. Most payment systems were built around people, with someone entering their card details, signing into an account, and clicking approve. If software is going to complete more tasks on its own, it will also need a way to pay without stopping to ask permission every time.
Mastercard is preparing for this possibility with its Agent Pay for Machines, which could enable agents to continuously buy services from each other, including payments worth fractions of a cent. XDC AI is also working on this problem, providing AI agents with the capability to find and pay for digital services on demand, rather than relying on traditional human checkout flows.
Atul Khekade, co-founder of XDC Network, notes that every internet transaction so far has assumed a person is on the other end of it. "AI Agents are breaking that assumption completely. If software is going to act on our behalf, it needs a way to pay for what it needs without waiting for someone to approve it every time." A user can give an agent access to a wallet and set a limit on how much it is allowed to spend, and when the agent needs data from a paid API to finish a task, it can make the request and pay for it in USDC.
XDC is building this on x402, an open protocol developed by Coinbase, which resurrects HTTP 402, an old web status code meaning "Payment Required". An agent requests a paid API, the server responds with a price instead of the data, and the agent's wallet pays automatically, no login, no card number, no human in the loop. The Linux Foundation now oversees the x402 Foundation, which has 40 members including Mastercard, Visa, Stripe, American Express, Google, AWS, and Circle.
The Future of Autonomous Commerce
Adoption is still early, but x402 is beginning to attract some large names. The infrastructure work matters more than the headlines right now, as fully autonomous shopping is still limited, and AI is much further along at helping people compare options than at completing purchases on its own. However, the direction is clear, and XDC is betting that when agents do start paying their own way, they will need rails built for machine speed rather than human checkout, cents instead of dollars, and thousands of transactions instead of one.
The gap between x402's onchain activity and its ecosystem valuation is a reminder that infrastructure and adoption rarely move at the same pace. What is being built is real, the settlement rails, the wallet permissions, and integrations with players like Bridge, but the volume moving through them today is still a fraction of what the numbers around this space suggest. For now, AI remains far better at helping people decide what to buy than at completing the purchase itself, and the real contest is playing out between card networks and networks built for stablecoin settlement.
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