7 ms·

x402 — An open protocol for internet-native payments

228 points by thm 1y ago

aeon_ai 1y ago
For those who are interested in origins, a Coinbase sponsored protocol. With Stripe moving into the space heavily and looking to lock things up in "Stripe-land", I think having an open protocol is great.
- kreetx 1y ago
  It's not the shape of the API payload that is the problem, is it? Few banks have a REST API for payments is the issue IMO.
  - aeon_ai 1y ago
    The nature of the transaction itself is fundamentally different in a paygated/trustless API request. This is different from an API schema of a /payments/ endpoint being segregated from the actual resource that is being paid for. In this model, the payment is the cost of entry for the resource request itself. It's not as directly applicable to all payment scenarios, but enables a new class of transaction that is effectively pay-per-request. It's worth noting that this protocol is primarily supported by Coinbase today -- You'd be using USDC on the Base network (Layer 2 on top of Ethereum). However, the protocol itself is opening meaning anyone can self-host the same mechanics on any network, with any token/crypto asset.
  - subscribed 1y ago
    There are modern banks-connected (including PBs) finance firms that offer modern protocols and can facilitate payments quickly and nicely (offering both custodial And non-custodial services). I support one of the similar projects in my organisation and I can't wait for golive.
  - Qworg 1y ago
    FIS is just waiting for them to pay $250k/enabled API call to make it happen...
- cornholio 1y ago
  A truly open payment protocol should handle any currency (not force you to adopt crypto coins) and would leave it to the merchant and buyer to agree on their settlement method or intermediary, the cancelation and dispute policy etc. It's entirely possible then that some options would be available, for example in SEPA, that offer instant and irreversible settlement at zero cost.
  - __erik 1y ago
    (x402 author here) Thats actually exactly what the intention with x402 is. Merchants express to the buyer multiple ways that they accept payment and the buyer chooses the one they prefer. As of right now stablecoins on various crypto rails are the major form (largely because they're the easiest to start with from a development standpoint), but as Cloudflare indicated in their blogpost, they're proposing a scheme that uses deferred payment via credit card or ACH https://blog.cloudflare.com/x402/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/x402/.
    - lucasverra 1y ago
      Thanks for stopping by.
    - contingencies 1y ago
      Hi Erik. Frankly, I wonder if this is an elaborate joke since there are some serious concerns in terms of CVP ("wait two seconds and retry"), in terms of gatekeeping potential nobody will sleepwalk in to ("we solve two the second wait with our CoinbaseCoin, get an enterprise subscription!"), or in terms of the inherent lack of openness in HTTP these days (client/server, HTTPS identity chains, DNS, gatekeepers like CloudFlare). For thoughts on a more open protocol without these drawbacks see https://raw.githubusercontent.com/globalcitizen/ifex-protocol/refs/heads/master/draft-ifex-00.txt https://raw.githubusercontent.com/globalcitizen/ifex-protoco... Sincerely, architect of a predecessor exchange (founder asked me not to continue work on open protocols).
  - immibis 1y ago
    How would you make it open and decentralized without crypto? I mean, you say it's only open if it supports all currencies, but I say it's only open if it supports all users and use cases, and that's a thing that non-crypto currencies don't do (except for Liberty Reserve, which got shut down by the government for precisely this reason). Like, it's not really open if they have the option to require you to have a Wells Fargo account. We're not falling for the HTTP Cloudflare-great-firewall trick again, I hope. And for crypto payments they already don't need this because they can use the de-facto-standard Metamask API, at least for Ethereum-compatible blockchains.
- egorfine 1y ago
  Given that this protocol is Coinbase sponsored, you can be sure that the whole KYC/AML bullshit is going to be applied to every transaction. Want to read a paid message? Please upload your recent utility bill and confirm your identity with a video call. Sorry, you are not a US citizen with possession of the only subset of ID documents we support, reject.
  - disgruntledphd2 1y ago
    > Given that this protocol is Coinbase sponsored, you can be sure that the whole KYC/AML bullshit is going to be applied to every transaction. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on perspective), this is the law basically everywhere where people have money. Like, you can avoid KYC/AML checks by using small operators, but as they get larger they'll have to introduce them or be regulated out of existence. If you really hate this (which is a valid position that I mostly don't share) then you should either run for elected office or sponsor/help other people to do this, as that's the only way to change the law. Fundamentally, as the internet ends up mapping to just society, it will be a reflection of society, much of which is driven by government regulation.
    - egorfine 1y ago
      Fortunately crypto exists. Fortunately, it is perfectly usable in real world while avoiding most of the KYC/AML crap.
      - disgruntledphd2 1y ago
        Honestly, probably not for long. Like, basically any Western headquartered crypto company will have (at least in theory) KYC/AML checks. And I'm not sure how you plan to get your crypto into fiat without hitting a bank/financial institution which will have these checks. Like, this is part of society (for some good and some bad reasons, like a lot of other things).
        egorfine 1y ago
hvb2 1y ago
Why not look at sepa? There's a whole continent that already solved this? Ticks all the boxes: - No fee - Instant - Blockchain agnostic I mean for the actual settlement obviously. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area
- edoceo 1y ago
  USA has started a FedNow program to make, basically, ACH faster. Will take ages for that to become a browser extension, or embed. Too many parties make money off the current way. Similar to the health "care" ("insurance") in USA
  - jancsika 1y ago
    > Will take ages for that to become a browser extension, or embed. "ACH faster" cannot and should not become a browser extension, ever. You could instead argue that the Fed ought to additionally implement a blind signature service a la Digicash. Then customers could make anonymous digital cash payments to participating banks and businesses. (I.e., the recipient is known but the payer isn't.) Would you advocate for that? If so, you'd have to battle way more cryptobros than Visa/Mastercard lobbyists. Hell, the cryptobros are already spamming Youtube saying ISO 20022 is an evil conspiracy by banking incumbents. And that's just an XML messaging spec! Imagine the pushback here on HN if you seriously pushed for the fed to do proper digital cash.
- flessner 1y ago
  As much as I like SEPA it is primarily for bank transfers. The way that payments work through SEPA is that the merchant pulls the money from your account. Legally they require a "mandate" - this can be as little as a handwritten signature on a document. Security is essentially provided by easy reversal and strong penalties for abuse.
  - kingo55 1y ago
    As opposed to blockchain where reversal depends on the grace of the merchant. I've often wondered whether payments providers entering the blockchain space (like Visa/Mastercard) would act as trusted intermediaries for dispute resolution. Kind of a 2-of-3 multisig to disperse the funds in escrow.
quinndupont 1y ago
Corporate capture of payment rails, masquerading as open payments.
- dewey 1y ago
  How would non corporate payment rails look like?
  - hackernudes 1y ago
    The Lightning Network (an open payment layer built on top of Bitcoin) or some other cryptocurrency.
    - kingo55 1y ago
      That would be nice... Good luck to you if you can use it. I would consider myself tech savvy but I struggled immensely to run lightning without custodial risk back.
    - philipwhiuk 1y ago
      This is built on top of crypto currency.
  - mrbluecoat 1y ago
    Perhaps something like https://github.com/stellar/basic-payment-app/blob/main/src/routes/dashboard/send/+page.svelte https://github.com/stellar/basic-payment-app/blob/main/src/r...
  - littlecranky67 1y ago
    Look at how Nostr does it with lightning micropayments ("zaps"). No middlemen needed.
westurner 1y ago
How are Hashed Timelock Agreements (HTA) like in the Interledger Protocol (ILP) and WebMonetization Protocol more secure than x402? Does x402 prevent the double-spending problem? Isn't it regressive to return to dependence on DNS for financial transactions?
- __erik 1y ago
  >Does x402 prevent the double-spending problem? This depends on the implementation on the underlying network, but basically the spending signs an authorization for transfer, and the merchant either settles that onchain themselves or delegates to what is called a facilitator that settles on their behalf. On EVM chains for the exact payment scheme this leverages EIP-3009 signatures
  - westurner 1y ago
    ILP (Ripple, FedNow,) has Connectors. I just had this conversation about "Intents" and ILP Connectors: https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=45296648 https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=45296648 "Powering AI commerce with the new Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)" https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/announcing-agents-to-payments-ap2-protocol https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/a... : > AP2 builds trust by using Mandates—tamper-proof, cryptographically-signed digital contracts that serve as verifiable proof of a user's instructions. These mandates are signed by verifiable credentials (VCs) and act as the foundational evidence for every transaction. google-a2a/a2a-x402: A2A x402 extension: https://github.com/google-a2a/a2a-x402 https://github.com/google-a2a/a2a-x402 SingularityNET is this concept too, FWIU. https://github.com/singnet https://github.com/singnet So A2A has W3C VC Verifiable Credentials (and DIDs), but not x402? Re: ILP payment pointers, DNS, blockerts (W3C VC) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42961635 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42961635 : > How can or should a Blockcert indicate an ILP Interledger Protocol address or a Payment Pointer? In order to avoid DNS. Basically because gethostbyname() does not indicate DNSSEC validation status, or channel sec status e.g. whether there's DoH/DoT/DoQ at every edge in the DNS network), or CT Certificate Transparency log cert revocation status (and OCSP and CRL are in-band)) How can ILP and x402 (and IDK EDNS) be integrated? Are they complementary? > Think of x402 as the universal "cash register" signal and ILP as the versatile "payment network" that can handle any currency. [...] and pathfinding with path cost and HTA Hashed-Timelock Agreements for the whole path, with an auditable open spec message standard that accounts for each of the Connectors involved (who specify credit limits). > So, x402 can signal the need for a payment, and ILP can be the underlying mechanism to fulfill that payment request, regardless of the user's preferred currency or payment provider How do x402 and ILP SPSP Simple Payment Setup Protocol compare in terms of signaling the need for a payment? > SPSP is a simplified, connectionless mode of Interledger that is often used for streaming micropayments, as seen in the Web Monetization standard. The signaling is more implicit and is discovered through HTML/HTTP, rather than being an HTTP status code itself. From "HTTP 402: Payment Required" (2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22214156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22214156 : > The new W3C Payment Request API [4] makes it easy for browsers to offer a standard (and probably(?) already accessible) interface for the payment data entry screen, at least. https://www.w3.org/TR/payment-request/ https://www.w3.org/TR/payment-request/ There's probably a better HTTP Status dog for 402?
btczeus 1y ago
basically a copy of l402.org
jmarbach 1y ago
Anchor Browser has documentation here showing how to combine x402 with an agentic browser session. https://anchorbrowser.io/blog/pay-to-win-coinbase-x402-anchor-partnership https://anchorbrowser.io/blog/pay-to-win-coinbase-x402-ancho... We are not far off from humans giving a monthly allowance to their agentic counterparts.
- warkdarrior 1y ago
  As long as the agentic browser can automate my PirateBay tasks, I don't intend to overcomplicate it with payments and such.
olivia-banks 1y ago
This whole thing seems very strange to me, but maybe I’m missing the point. > API services paid per request Given that this runs atop Payment Required, doesn’t this mean that each API request would involve an extra one or two data transfers? > AI agents that autonomously pay for API access Is there a reason why you wouldn’t pay ahead of time? I just understand why you couldn’t buy a few dozen/hundred/thousand dollars worth of credits, and wait until it runs low. > Paywalls for digital content Isn’t this crypto only? The overlap of people paying for digital content and dealing with crypto must be relatively small. Is it meant to funnel people to a payment portal, going through fiat, à la Coinbase? > Microservices and tooling monetized via microtransactions How is this different than the API point? > Proxy services that aggregate and resell API capabilities I’m not a huge backend person, but what would be the purpose of this?
- tleyden5iwx 1y ago
  I think the purpose is so that your agent can do things like buy airline tickets for you. Using x402 it doesn't have to go through a typical credit card checkout process, which might have a lot of safeguards that make sure there's an actual human on the other end (captchas, etc)
  - cestith 1y ago
    Airlines pretty much need to know their customers no matter how they get paid. Wouldn’t you just be moving that to another part of the process in that example?
    - tleyden5iwx 1y ago
      API clients can already easily identify the user during the authentication process. What’s currently “missing” is a way for an API client to pay a service via the API call “on the fly”, without having a credit card on file or some prior account balance. Maybe a better example is an image generation api. Your agent chooses one based on its research, and without any account or credit card on file, it buys you an image using a x402.
- 1y ago
jgrahamc 1y ago
Cloudflare using it: https://blog.cloudflare.com/x402/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/x402/
lucb1e 1y ago
Has anyone tried this out and can say how long it takes? The flowchart on the back-end looks pretty involved, needing to publish transactions on the chain and get confirmations. For Bitcoin, that takes upwards of like 15 minutes depending on what block depth the receiving party cares about and stuff. Even foregoing that and just listening for conflicting transactions being broadcast for a few seconds, that's an annoying delay to open a page. Not to mention dealing with the UI to authorize a specific payment for every damn page on paywalled news websites
- wbnns 1y ago
  It's pretty trivial to set up, here's a link to the docs: https://x402.gitbook.io/x402 https://x402.gitbook.io/x402 Transactions confirm every 2 seconds on Base, and preconfirm even faster (every 200ms); there's no lag from a peer to peer payments perspective since they settle so quickly. Through account abstraction and spend permissions, you also don't have to wait and authorize every single payment. It's a customizable from a developer perspective depending on how they want to build out their application.
straumat 1y ago
I am developping an open source x402 Java stack and I love this protocol ! You can see my projet ar https://mogami.tech https://mogami.tech
Dementor430 1y ago
I am excited to see how people will use this. Are there any sites actively allowing to use it rn?
- wbnns 1y ago
  Yep! Here: https://www.x402.org/ecosystem https://www.x402.org/ecosystem
zb3 1y ago
Oh no, apparently this crypto shit is not dead yet.. :(
- nodesocket 1y ago
  And further proof HN is terrible with finance and making money in general.
  - TheAmazingRace 1y ago
    What do you mean? Perhaps some HN users prefer traditional financial vehicles instead of something that could be fly-by-night. x402 might end up being more legitimate, yet the ecosystem page doesn't inspire confidence - I only recognized node and the rest feel rag tag. Let's not kid ourselves into thinking that this space hasn't been problematic before, so skepticism is warranted.
littlecranky67 1y ago
No mention of Lightning or Bitcoin in the entire whitepaper. Just Base - a L2 rollup on Etherum developed by Coinbase which is behind the x402 standard. Hope this goes nowhere, clearly Coinbase has too much interest in pushing its own stack. Free and open payments should be bitcoin based to be truely decentralized, on Layers-2 such as Lightning or Liquid.
- wanderingbit 1y ago
  You seem like a knowledgeable crypto user. Can you help integrate lightning payments with x402? Then we'll be rid of this Base/corporate-tech nonsense.
  - roasbeef 1y ago
    This already exists (L402 -- formerly known as LSAT), and pre-dates x402 by several years: * https://lightning.engineering/posts/2020-03-30-lsat/ * https://docs.lightning.engineering/the-lightning-network/l402
  - paool 1y ago
    If he was, he wouldn't be shilling blockstream solutions.
- wbnns 1y ago
  It's really difficult to build agentic applications on top of Bitcoin. It's generally possible throughout the EVM however, which is many networks, not just Base. Base won't be the only EVM-compatible network that x402 utilizes.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - littlecranky67 1y ago
    That is why I said Layer-2, like Lightning. That is not difficult at all, there are already successfull, workable solutions that allow for automated micro-payments (alby, or Nostr's zaps).
0xAFFFF 1y ago
The protocol boast "no fee" but that's deceptive: if it's based upon a blockchain, there will be transaction fees. Now if the problem they want to solve is the case of low amount payments (they claim "no high minimum") then a percentage fee is not an issue, but a per-transaction fee can be absolutely massive. Also depending on the blockchain, you're exposed to fee volatility, which might be another issue. Am I missing something here?
- wbnns 1y ago
  > The protocol boast "no fee" but that's deceptive: if it's based upon a blockchain, there will be transaction fees. These days many transaction types onchain are completely free and subsidized because gas costs are subcent[1]. x402 functions predominantly on L2 networks like Base, where individual tx costs between agents are generally not a factor. [1] https://www.gasfees.io/ https://www.gasfees.io/
  - wmf 1y ago
    According to that site Base USDC fee is 1/8th of a cent. The x402 whitepaper says 1/100th of a cent so I'm not sure what accounts for the discrepancy; maybe Coinbase is willing to subsidize fees in some cases.
    - __erik 1y ago
      Gas is variable, but Coinbase currently subsidizes x402 transactions that go through our facilitator
- __erik 1y ago
  x402 as a protocol has no fees, but the underlying network transactions are conducted on my have costs. Merchants can choose the underlying network transactions are conducted on that best fit their usecase. x402 also has the concept of a facilitator, which exists to abstract away the underlying payment networks. Many facilitators (including Coinbase's) subsidize the gas used for transactions.
- kelvinjps 1y ago
ceayo 1y ago
More crypto and more microtransactions - look what a place the web has become... I don't see why we can't just happily hobble along our free cute little information highway and why capitalism has nowadays infused the internet with a rage for money-making.
- wmf 1y ago
  New Internet Business Model https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-2025-annual-founders-letter/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-2025-annual-founders-... discussed yesterday https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45334599 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45334599
- Karrot_Kream 1y ago
  The free web hasn't gone anywhere. You're using it now aren't you, on HN?
cyberax 1y ago
Cryptocrap. Pass.
seebeen 1y ago
Working with banks and payment processors during a 15-year period, I can with 1.000% certainty say - no sane Bank will touch this with a 10-foot pole. Not now, not in 20 years.
- wbnns 1y ago
  Would you have said the same if I told you last year that the president and first lady would each have a memecoin?
  - seebeen 1y ago
    You mean a ponzi scheme, right?
- wmf 1y ago
  Anchorage appears to already support Base.
- Seattle3503 1y ago
  Coinbase, Kraken, etc... would. And they connect to your bank, so it doesn't seem like a problem if banks don't want to get involved.
- egorfine 1y ago
  Thankfully it doesn't matter because this happens on a blockchain so banks can go pound sand with their restriction and KYC/AML horseshit. Given that this is Coinbase sponsored I'm not sure this will be even available to the people of the world despite being on blockchain.
smashem 1y ago
18 years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/6hc3w/comment/c03udg0/ https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/6hc3w/comment/c03udg0/ > "This code is reserved for future use." > For when AT&T, Comcast, TimeWarner, et. al. have succeeded in their plan to make the interweb a toll-road. "Oh, you want your packets to go to reddit.com? That will be $0.00015/per." Redditor had the right idea, just wrong names.
bashmohandes 1y ago
Interesting, how does that work? 10 secs into it, Blockchain Close tab
transformi 1y ago
Looks like a competitor to the A2P that google released....
- solumos 1y ago
  No, they're working together on it > AP2 is designed as a universal protocol, providing security and trust for a variety of payments like stablecoins and cryptocurrencies. To accelerate support for the web3 ecosystem, in collaboration with Coinbase, Ethereum Foundation, MetaMask and other leading organizations, we have extended the core constructs of AP2 and launched the A2A x402 extension, a production-ready solution for agent-based crypto payments. Extensions like these will help shape the evolution of cryptocurrency integrations within the core AP2 protocol. [0] https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/announcing-agents-to-payments-ap2-protocol https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/a...
dheera 1y ago
> dormant 402 HTTP status code Just use 403 until payments are made. This seems like an unnecessary marketing focus on an error instead of the actual technology. API payments don't need to happen on the fly, and it will probably be detrimental to their latency to do so.
cestith 1y ago
I don’t know who at Coinbase discerned that HTTP 402 is unused. There are sites that return 402 and a relevant “pay your bill to continue” page out there. Not all of them will suddenly support this blockchain payment method.
- __erik 1y ago
  its not that 402 isn't used, its that there is no standard response, which makes it hard for AI agents to pay for access. x402 provides a standard response format clients can programmatically use to create a payment, either using crypto assets like stablecoins, or in future, fiat methods.
LelouBil 1y ago
> Instant settlement > Accept payments at the speed of the blockchain. Money in your wallet in 2 seconds, not T+2. Are crypto payments instant now ? I don't follow this space at all but my understanding was that the "speed of the blockchain" was pretty slow. Or maybe they mean this compared to payment processors or bank transfers that can take days ?
- __erik 1y ago
  Blockchains are fast and and cheap now! Modern blockchains like Base, Solana, Sui (and many more) typically have block times <2 seconds, and a stablecoin transfer can cost as little as $0.0005 independent of the $ amount being transfered
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- solumos 1y ago
  There are now chains with sub-second Time to Finality and sub-cent gas fees (this was not true ~3 years ago)
  - ranguna 1y ago
    Which chains have sub second block times?
    - swalsh 1y ago
      SOL, AVAX, SUI
      - ranguna 1y ago
        Thanks
    - solumos 1y ago
      Block time != time to finality Base has sub-second block times, but because it's an Ethereum L2, it technically has ~15min TTF
floating-io 1y ago
The choice of name comes off as shady to me; seems like a marketing hack to make it sound like it's some kind of internationally-accepted standard, like oh, X.500. Oh, and if you were wondering, yes, there is already an X.402[1] out there. [1] https://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-X.402/en https://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-X.402/en
jcfrei 1y ago
glad some people trying to make this. I've had the same idea in 2015 back when bitcoin was the only widely used cryptocurrency: https://www.jcfrei.com/the-ai-economy-bitcoin/ https://www.jcfrei.com/the-ai-economy-bitcoin/ now with stablecoins and much faster chains it makes even more sense
Seattle3503 1y ago
What's the easiest way to do this with a stablecoin? When I looked at USDC recently at the end of the tutorial I was following there was a throw way "and don't forget you need ethercoin too, to pay the gas transaction fee." That was after all the warnings about not sending to the wrong address or block chain. (Stable coins are on a bunch of block chains and apparently you are required to manually ensure the sender and receiver are on the same chain, otherwise your coins go bye bye) What's the point of I need a bunch of other coins and it's so complicated? This complexity and required tinkering seems like the kind of thing cryptocurrency nerds love, but is too complicated for someone just trying to make a payment.
- __erik 1y ago
  x402 abstracts away gas! You can try here from a human use standpoint: https://www.x402.org/protected https://www.x402.org/protected And you can see how to accept stablecoins or spend in the the examples https://github.com/coinbase/x402/tree/main/examples/typescript/servers/express https://github.com/coinbase/x402/tree/main/examples/typescri... https://github.com/coinbase/x402/blob/main/examples/typescript/clients/fetch/README.md https://github.com/coinbase/x402/blob/main/examples/typescri...
  - Seattle3503 1y ago
    Interesting. I couldn't get that working with Coinbase wallet or Metamask from FF on Android. Is there a contract structure that obviates the need for Ether, or in there somewhere am I buying ether and USDC from somewhere and I just don't see that interaction?
- Karrot_Kream 1y ago
  USDC is also available on Solana and there's fees there too but they're pretty infentessimal. I've sent USDC from Coinbase to my Solana wallet and haven't had to pay any fees, so I presume it's not high enough for Coinbase to bother charging anyone. As far as addresses, yeah there's no way to avoid this. When you send cryptocurrency there's no real way to ensure that a wallet exists at the receiver's address nor that the person you want to reach is at this address, so you need to be careful that you are using the correct address. Ethereum uses ENS addresses to help deal with this. In that way this is a lot like a wire transfer in the US. If you use the wrong account or routing number then you're basically SOL. There's some verification you can do with receiver names but if your recipient is just at some bank and only the bank name comes up there's not much you can do.
Hasz 1y ago
I looked at this space about 3 years ago, what I want seems to still not exist I am looking to sell physical goods for low total amounts (<$10 usd) via a website. The most basic e-commerce you can imagine. In particular, what I want: - fast-ish payments (settlement in <2hr) - low/zero per-payment cost, low % fee - your average HN user could figure out how to use it to pay What I don't need: - subscriptions - payment-level fraud protection - payment-level kyc - customer financing (a la Klarna) - rev rec It seems like Fednow or lightning would meet some (most?) of these requirements, but I have not yet seen it in the wild.
- Karrot_Kream 1y ago
  Does stablecoin send/receiving via stablecoins or Lightning not work? Is it too difficult to get a user to pay? x402 should work just fine?
- wmf 1y ago
  Tempo might be good for this once it comes out.
- egorfine 1y ago
  > - payment-level fraud protection > - payment-level kyc No one needs that. Not a single party to the transaction, however remote or secondary. Every participant absolutely hates those. All of which doesn't matter, because the whole KYC/AML bullshit is forced on us and it is inevitable in the TradFi world.
selkin 1y ago
At the bottom of the page, it reads "By using this site, you agree to be bound by the CDP Terms of Service and Global Privacy Policy." Shouldn't that be at the top? If you want me to agree to a EULA no one would read, at least make a show as if you expect people to read it, don't hide it in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'.
webstrand 1y ago
My experience using this, I picked "Frame" from their list of clients. 1. Getting USDC from the faucet was pretty easy 2. Connecting Frame to my browser worked well, x402 was immediately detected 3. The first transaction got lost, I submitted it and the page spun forever. I had to make a second transaction to make it work. If this was real money, it'd be super easy to make people pay twice, because my first transaction is probably languishing in a mempool somewhere. 4. Frame is a terrible tool to suggest. It has no transaction log, so once you commit you can't use any of the tricks like "send another transaction with the same nonce, but with more gas" in case it got lost. It also appears to be largely unmaintained. 5. Second transaction worked fine, processing was nearly instant, the feedback was good.
cyanydeez 1y ago
Isnt the speed of the blockchain still rediculously slow?
kogasa240p 1y ago
What about GNU taler?
- ranguna 1y ago
  What about it?
leventhan 1y ago
A big step towards agentic payments and commerce.

228 points by thm 1y ago

For those who are interested in origins, a Coinbase sponsored protocol. With Stripe moving into the space heavily and looking to lock things up in "Stripe-land", I think having an open protocol is great.

kreetx 1y ago
It's not the shape of the API payload that is the problem, is it? Few banks have a REST API for payments is the issue IMO.
- aeon_ai 1y ago
  The nature of the transaction itself is fundamentally different in a paygated/trustless API request. This is different from an API schema of a /payments/ endpoint being segregated from the actual resource that is being paid for. In this model, the payment is the cost of entry for the resource request itself. It's not as directly applicable to all payment scenarios, but enables a new class of transaction that is effectively pay-per-request. It's worth noting that this protocol is primarily supported by Coinbase today -- You'd be using USDC on the Base network (Layer 2 on top of Ethereum). However, the protocol itself is opening meaning anyone can self-host the same mechanics on any network, with any token/crypto asset.
- subscribed 1y ago
  There are modern banks-connected (including PBs) finance firms that offer modern protocols and can facilitate payments quickly and nicely (offering both custodial And non-custodial services). I support one of the similar projects in my organisation and I can't wait for golive.
- Qworg 1y ago
  FIS is just waiting for them to pay $250k/enabled API call to make it happen...
cornholio 1y ago
A truly open payment protocol should handle any currency (not force you to adopt crypto coins) and would leave it to the merchant and buyer to agree on their settlement method or intermediary, the cancelation and dispute policy etc. It's entirely possible then that some options would be available, for example in SEPA, that offer instant and irreversible settlement at zero cost.
- __erik 1y ago
  (x402 author here) Thats actually exactly what the intention with x402 is. Merchants express to the buyer multiple ways that they accept payment and the buyer chooses the one they prefer. As of right now stablecoins on various crypto rails are the major form (largely because they're the easiest to start with from a development standpoint), but as Cloudflare indicated in their blogpost, they're proposing a scheme that uses deferred payment via credit card or ACH https://blog.cloudflare.com/x402/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/x402/.
  - lucasverra 1y ago
    Thanks for stopping by.
  - contingencies 1y ago
    Hi Erik. Frankly, I wonder if this is an elaborate joke since there are some serious concerns in terms of CVP ("wait two seconds and retry"), in terms of gatekeeping potential nobody will sleepwalk in to ("we solve two the second wait with our CoinbaseCoin, get an enterprise subscription!"), or in terms of the inherent lack of openness in HTTP these days (client/server, HTTPS identity chains, DNS, gatekeepers like CloudFlare). For thoughts on a more open protocol without these drawbacks see https://raw.githubusercontent.com/globalcitizen/ifex-protocol/refs/heads/master/draft-ifex-00.txt https://raw.githubusercontent.com/globalcitizen/ifex-protoco... Sincerely, architect of a predecessor exchange (founder asked me not to continue work on open protocols).
- immibis 1y ago
  How would you make it open and decentralized without crypto? I mean, you say it's only open if it supports all currencies, but I say it's only open if it supports all users and use cases, and that's a thing that non-crypto currencies don't do (except for Liberty Reserve, which got shut down by the government for precisely this reason). Like, it's not really open if they have the option to require you to have a Wells Fargo account. We're not falling for the HTTP Cloudflare-great-firewall trick again, I hope. And for crypto payments they already don't need this because they can use the de-facto-standard Metamask API, at least for Ethereum-compatible blockchains.
egorfine 1y ago
Given that this protocol is Coinbase sponsored, you can be sure that the whole KYC/AML bullshit is going to be applied to every transaction. Want to read a paid message? Please upload your recent utility bill and confirm your identity with a video call. Sorry, you are not a US citizen with possession of the only subset of ID documents we support, reject.
- disgruntledphd2 1y ago
  > Given that this protocol is Coinbase sponsored, you can be sure that the whole KYC/AML bullshit is going to be applied to every transaction. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on perspective), this is the law basically everywhere where people have money. Like, you can avoid KYC/AML checks by using small operators, but as they get larger they'll have to introduce them or be regulated out of existence. If you really hate this (which is a valid position that I mostly don't share) then you should either run for elected office or sponsor/help other people to do this, as that's the only way to change the law. Fundamentally, as the internet ends up mapping to just society, it will be a reflection of society, much of which is driven by government regulation.
  - egorfine 1y ago
    Fortunately crypto exists. Fortunately, it is perfectly usable in real world while avoiding most of the KYC/AML crap.
    - disgruntledphd2 1y ago
      Honestly, probably not for long. Like, basically any Western headquartered crypto company will have (at least in theory) KYC/AML checks. And I'm not sure how you plan to get your crypto into fiat without hitting a bank/financial institution which will have these checks. Like, this is part of society (for some good and some bad reasons, like a lot of other things).
      - egorfine 1y ago

hvb2 1y ago

Why not look at sepa? There's a whole continent that already solved this? Ticks all the boxes: - No fee - Instant - Blockchain agnostic I mean for the actual settlement obviously. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area

edoceo 1y ago
USA has started a FedNow program to make, basically, ACH faster. Will take ages for that to become a browser extension, or embed. Too many parties make money off the current way. Similar to the health "care" ("insurance") in USA
- jancsika 1y ago
  > Will take ages for that to become a browser extension, or embed. "ACH faster" cannot and should not become a browser extension, ever. You could instead argue that the Fed ought to additionally implement a blind signature service a la Digicash. Then customers could make anonymous digital cash payments to participating banks and businesses. (I.e., the recipient is known but the payer isn't.) Would you advocate for that? If so, you'd have to battle way more cryptobros than Visa/Mastercard lobbyists. Hell, the cryptobros are already spamming Youtube saying ISO 20022 is an evil conspiracy by banking incumbents. And that's just an XML messaging spec! Imagine the pushback here on HN if you seriously pushed for the fed to do proper digital cash.
flessner 1y ago
As much as I like SEPA it is primarily for bank transfers. The way that payments work through SEPA is that the merchant pulls the money from your account. Legally they require a "mandate" - this can be as little as a handwritten signature on a document. Security is essentially provided by easy reversal and strong penalties for abuse.
- kingo55 1y ago
  As opposed to blockchain where reversal depends on the grace of the merchant. I've often wondered whether payments providers entering the blockchain space (like Visa/Mastercard) would act as trusted intermediaries for dispute resolution. Kind of a 2-of-3 multisig to disperse the funds in escrow.

quinndupont 1y ago

Corporate capture of payment rails, masquerading as open payments.

dewey 1y ago
How would non corporate payment rails look like?
- hackernudes 1y ago
  The Lightning Network (an open payment layer built on top of Bitcoin) or some other cryptocurrency.
  - kingo55 1y ago
    That would be nice... Good luck to you if you can use it. I would consider myself tech savvy but I struggled immensely to run lightning without custodial risk back.
  - philipwhiuk 1y ago
    This is built on top of crypto currency.
- mrbluecoat 1y ago
  Perhaps something like https://github.com/stellar/basic-payment-app/blob/main/src/routes/dashboard/send/+page.svelte https://github.com/stellar/basic-payment-app/blob/main/src/r...
- littlecranky67 1y ago
  Look at how Nostr does it with lightning micropayments ("zaps"). No middlemen needed.

westurner 1y ago

How are Hashed Timelock Agreements (HTA) like in the Interledger Protocol (ILP) and WebMonetization Protocol more secure than x402? Does x402 prevent the double-spending problem? Isn't it regressive to return to dependence on DNS for financial transactions?

__erik 1y ago
>Does x402 prevent the double-spending problem? This depends on the implementation on the underlying network, but basically the spending signs an authorization for transfer, and the merchant either settles that onchain themselves or delegates to what is called a facilitator that settles on their behalf. On EVM chains for the exact payment scheme this leverages EIP-3009 signatures
- westurner 1y ago
  ILP (Ripple, FedNow,) has Connectors. I just had this conversation about "Intents" and ILP Connectors: https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=45296648 https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=45296648 "Powering AI commerce with the new Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)" https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/announcing-agents-to-payments-ap2-protocol https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/a... : > AP2 builds trust by using Mandates—tamper-proof, cryptographically-signed digital contracts that serve as verifiable proof of a user's instructions. These mandates are signed by verifiable credentials (VCs) and act as the foundational evidence for every transaction. google-a2a/a2a-x402: A2A x402 extension: https://github.com/google-a2a/a2a-x402 https://github.com/google-a2a/a2a-x402 SingularityNET is this concept too, FWIU. https://github.com/singnet https://github.com/singnet So A2A has W3C VC Verifiable Credentials (and DIDs), but not x402? Re: ILP payment pointers, DNS, blockerts (W3C VC) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42961635 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42961635 : > How can or should a Blockcert indicate an ILP Interledger Protocol address or a Payment Pointer? In order to avoid DNS. Basically because gethostbyname() does not indicate DNSSEC validation status, or channel sec status e.g. whether there's DoH/DoT/DoQ at every edge in the DNS network), or CT Certificate Transparency log cert revocation status (and OCSP and CRL are in-band)) How can ILP and x402 (and IDK EDNS) be integrated? Are they complementary? > Think of x402 as the universal "cash register" signal and ILP as the versatile "payment network" that can handle any currency. [...] and pathfinding with path cost and HTA Hashed-Timelock Agreements for the whole path, with an auditable open spec message standard that accounts for each of the Connectors involved (who specify credit limits). > So, x402 can signal the need for a payment, and ILP can be the underlying mechanism to fulfill that payment request, regardless of the user's preferred currency or payment provider How do x402 and ILP SPSP Simple Payment Setup Protocol compare in terms of signaling the need for a payment? > SPSP is a simplified, connectionless mode of Interledger that is often used for streaming micropayments, as seen in the Web Monetization standard. The signaling is more implicit and is discovered through HTML/HTTP, rather than being an HTTP status code itself. From "HTTP 402: Payment Required" (2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22214156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22214156 : > The new W3C Payment Request API [4] makes it easy for browsers to offer a standard (and probably(?) already accessible) interface for the payment data entry screen, at least. https://www.w3.org/TR/payment-request/ https://www.w3.org/TR/payment-request/ There's probably a better HTTP Status dog for 402?

btczeus 1y ago

basically a copy of l402.org

jmarbach 1y ago

Anchor Browser has documentation here showing how to combine x402 with an agentic browser session. https://anchorbrowser.io/blog/pay-to-win-coinbase-x402-anchor-partnership https://anchorbrowser.io/blog/pay-to-win-coinbase-x402-ancho... We are not far off from humans giving a monthly allowance to their agentic counterparts.

warkdarrior 1y ago
As long as the agentic browser can automate my PirateBay tasks, I don't intend to overcomplicate it with payments and such.

olivia-banks 1y ago

This whole thing seems very strange to me, but maybe I’m missing the point. > API services paid per request Given that this runs atop Payment Required, doesn’t this mean that each API request would involve an extra one or two data transfers? > AI agents that autonomously pay for API access Is there a reason why you wouldn’t pay ahead of time? I just understand why you couldn’t buy a few dozen/hundred/thousand dollars worth of credits, and wait until it runs low. > Paywalls for digital content Isn’t this crypto only? The overlap of people paying for digital content and dealing with crypto must be relatively small. Is it meant to funnel people to a payment portal, going through fiat, à la Coinbase? > Microservices and tooling monetized via microtransactions How is this different than the API point? > Proxy services that aggregate and resell API capabilities I’m not a huge backend person, but what would be the purpose of this?

tleyden5iwx 1y ago
I think the purpose is so that your agent can do things like buy airline tickets for you. Using x402 it doesn't have to go through a typical credit card checkout process, which might have a lot of safeguards that make sure there's an actual human on the other end (captchas, etc)
- cestith 1y ago
  Airlines pretty much need to know their customers no matter how they get paid. Wouldn’t you just be moving that to another part of the process in that example?
  - tleyden5iwx 1y ago
    API clients can already easily identify the user during the authentication process. What’s currently “missing” is a way for an API client to pay a service via the API call “on the fly”, without having a credit card on file or some prior account balance. Maybe a better example is an image generation api. Your agent chooses one based on its research, and without any account or credit card on file, it buys you an image using a x402.
1y ago

jgrahamc 1y ago

Cloudflare using it: https://blog.cloudflare.com/x402/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/x402/

lucb1e 1y ago

Has anyone tried this out and can say how long it takes? The flowchart on the back-end looks pretty involved, needing to publish transactions on the chain and get confirmations. For Bitcoin, that takes upwards of like 15 minutes depending on what block depth the receiving party cares about and stuff. Even foregoing that and just listening for conflicting transactions being broadcast for a few seconds, that's an annoying delay to open a page. Not to mention dealing with the UI to authorize a specific payment for every damn page on paywalled news websites

wbnns 1y ago
It's pretty trivial to set up, here's a link to the docs: https://x402.gitbook.io/x402 https://x402.gitbook.io/x402 Transactions confirm every 2 seconds on Base, and preconfirm even faster (every 200ms); there's no lag from a peer to peer payments perspective since they settle so quickly. Through account abstraction and spend permissions, you also don't have to wait and authorize every single payment. It's a customizable from a developer perspective depending on how they want to build out their application.

straumat 1y ago

I am developping an open source x402 Java stack and I love this protocol ! You can see my projet ar https://mogami.tech https://mogami.tech

Dementor430 1y ago

I am excited to see how people will use this. Are there any sites actively allowing to use it rn?

wbnns 1y ago
Yep! Here: https://www.x402.org/ecosystem https://www.x402.org/ecosystem

zb3 1y ago

Oh no, apparently this crypto shit is not dead yet.. :(

nodesocket 1y ago
And further proof HN is terrible with finance and making money in general.
- TheAmazingRace 1y ago
  What do you mean? Perhaps some HN users prefer traditional financial vehicles instead of something that could be fly-by-night. x402 might end up being more legitimate, yet the ecosystem page doesn't inspire confidence - I only recognized node and the rest feel rag tag. Let's not kid ourselves into thinking that this space hasn't been problematic before, so skepticism is warranted.

littlecranky67 1y ago

No mention of Lightning or Bitcoin in the entire whitepaper. Just Base - a L2 rollup on Etherum developed by Coinbase which is behind the x402 standard. Hope this goes nowhere, clearly Coinbase has too much interest in pushing its own stack. Free and open payments should be bitcoin based to be truely decentralized, on Layers-2 such as Lightning or Liquid.

wanderingbit 1y ago
You seem like a knowledgeable crypto user. Can you help integrate lightning payments with x402? Then we'll be rid of this Base/corporate-tech nonsense.
- roasbeef 1y ago
  This already exists (L402 -- formerly known as LSAT), and pre-dates x402 by several years: * https://lightning.engineering/posts/2020-03-30-lsat/ * https://docs.lightning.engineering/the-lightning-network/l402
- paool 1y ago
  If he was, he wouldn't be shilling blockstream solutions.
wbnns 1y ago
It's really difficult to build agentic applications on top of Bitcoin. It's generally possible throughout the EVM however, which is many networks, not just Base. Base won't be the only EVM-compatible network that x402 utilizes.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- littlecranky67 1y ago
  That is why I said Layer-2, like Lightning. That is not difficult at all, there are already successfull, workable solutions that allow for automated micro-payments (alby, or Nostr's zaps).

0xAFFFF 1y ago

The protocol boast "no fee" but that's deceptive: if it's based upon a blockchain, there will be transaction fees. Now if the problem they want to solve is the case of low amount payments (they claim "no high minimum") then a percentage fee is not an issue, but a per-transaction fee can be absolutely massive. Also depending on the blockchain, you're exposed to fee volatility, which might be another issue. Am I missing something here?

wbnns 1y ago
> The protocol boast "no fee" but that's deceptive: if it's based upon a blockchain, there will be transaction fees. These days many transaction types onchain are completely free and subsidized because gas costs are subcent[1]. x402 functions predominantly on L2 networks like Base, where individual tx costs between agents are generally not a factor. [1] https://www.gasfees.io/ https://www.gasfees.io/
- wmf 1y ago
  According to that site Base USDC fee is 1/8th of a cent. The x402 whitepaper says 1/100th of a cent so I'm not sure what accounts for the discrepancy; maybe Coinbase is willing to subsidize fees in some cases.
  - __erik 1y ago
    Gas is variable, but Coinbase currently subsidizes x402 transactions that go through our facilitator
__erik 1y ago
x402 as a protocol has no fees, but the underlying network transactions are conducted on my have costs. Merchants can choose the underlying network transactions are conducted on that best fit their usecase. x402 also has the concept of a facilitator, which exists to abstract away the underlying payment networks. Many facilitators (including Coinbase's) subsidize the gas used for transactions.
kelvinjps 1y ago

ceayo 1y ago

More crypto and more microtransactions - look what a place the web has become... I don't see why we can't just happily hobble along our free cute little information highway and why capitalism has nowadays infused the internet with a rage for money-making.

wmf 1y ago
New Internet Business Model https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-2025-annual-founders-letter/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-2025-annual-founders-... discussed yesterday https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45334599 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45334599
Karrot_Kream 1y ago
The free web hasn't gone anywhere. You're using it now aren't you, on HN?

cyberax 1y ago

Cryptocrap. Pass.

seebeen 1y ago

Working with banks and payment processors during a 15-year period, I can with 1.000% certainty say - no sane Bank will touch this with a 10-foot pole. Not now, not in 20 years.

wbnns 1y ago
Would you have said the same if I told you last year that the president and first lady would each have a memecoin?
- seebeen 1y ago
  You mean a ponzi scheme, right?
wmf 1y ago
Anchorage appears to already support Base.
Seattle3503 1y ago
Coinbase, Kraken, etc... would. And they connect to your bank, so it doesn't seem like a problem if banks don't want to get involved.
egorfine 1y ago
Thankfully it doesn't matter because this happens on a blockchain so banks can go pound sand with their restriction and KYC/AML horseshit. Given that this is Coinbase sponsored I'm not sure this will be even available to the people of the world despite being on blockchain.

smashem 1y ago

18 years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/6hc3w/comment/c03udg0/ https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/6hc3w/comment/c03udg0/ > "This code is reserved for future use." > For when AT&T, Comcast, TimeWarner, et. al. have succeeded in their plan to make the interweb a toll-road. "Oh, you want your packets to go to reddit.com? That will be $0.00015/per." Redditor had the right idea, just wrong names.

bashmohandes 1y ago

Interesting, how does that work? 10 secs into it, Blockchain Close tab

transformi 1y ago

Looks like a competitor to the A2P that google released....

solumos 1y ago
No, they're working together on it > AP2 is designed as a universal protocol, providing security and trust for a variety of payments like stablecoins and cryptocurrencies. To accelerate support for the web3 ecosystem, in collaboration with Coinbase, Ethereum Foundation, MetaMask and other leading organizations, we have extended the core constructs of AP2 and launched the A2A x402 extension, a production-ready solution for agent-based crypto payments. Extensions like these will help shape the evolution of cryptocurrency integrations within the core AP2 protocol. [0] https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/announcing-agents-to-payments-ap2-protocol https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/a...

dheera 1y ago

> dormant 402 HTTP status code Just use 403 until payments are made. This seems like an unnecessary marketing focus on an error instead of the actual technology. API payments don't need to happen on the fly, and it will probably be detrimental to their latency to do so.

cestith 1y ago

I don’t know who at Coinbase discerned that HTTP 402 is unused. There are sites that return 402 and a relevant “pay your bill to continue” page out there. Not all of them will suddenly support this blockchain payment method.

__erik 1y ago
its not that 402 isn't used, its that there is no standard response, which makes it hard for AI agents to pay for access. x402 provides a standard response format clients can programmatically use to create a payment, either using crypto assets like stablecoins, or in future, fiat methods.

LelouBil 1y ago

> Instant settlement > Accept payments at the speed of the blockchain. Money in your wallet in 2 seconds, not T+2. Are crypto payments instant now ? I don't follow this space at all but my understanding was that the "speed of the blockchain" was pretty slow. Or maybe they mean this compared to payment processors or bank transfers that can take days ?

__erik 1y ago
Blockchains are fast and and cheap now! Modern blockchains like Base, Solana, Sui (and many more) typically have block times <2 seconds, and a stablecoin transfer can cost as little as $0.0005 independent of the $ amount being transfered
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
solumos 1y ago
There are now chains with sub-second Time to Finality and sub-cent gas fees (this was not true ~3 years ago)
- ranguna 1y ago
  Which chains have sub second block times?
  - swalsh 1y ago
    SOL, AVAX, SUI
    - ranguna 1y ago
      Thanks
  - solumos 1y ago
    Block time != time to finality Base has sub-second block times, but because it's an Ethereum L2, it technically has ~15min TTF

floating-io 1y ago

The choice of name comes off as shady to me; seems like a marketing hack to make it sound like it's some kind of internationally-accepted standard, like oh, X.500. Oh, and if you were wondering, yes, there is already an X.402[1] out there. [1] https://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-X.402/en https://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-X.402/en

jcfrei 1y ago

glad some people trying to make this. I've had the same idea in 2015 back when bitcoin was the only widely used cryptocurrency: https://www.jcfrei.com/the-ai-economy-bitcoin/ https://www.jcfrei.com/the-ai-economy-bitcoin/ now with stablecoins and much faster chains it makes even more sense

Seattle3503 1y ago

What's the easiest way to do this with a stablecoin? When I looked at USDC recently at the end of the tutorial I was following there was a throw way "and don't forget you need ethercoin too, to pay the gas transaction fee." That was after all the warnings about not sending to the wrong address or block chain. (Stable coins are on a bunch of block chains and apparently you are required to manually ensure the sender and receiver are on the same chain, otherwise your coins go bye bye) What's the point of I need a bunch of other coins and it's so complicated? This complexity and required tinkering seems like the kind of thing cryptocurrency nerds love, but is too complicated for someone just trying to make a payment.

__erik 1y ago
x402 abstracts away gas! You can try here from a human use standpoint: https://www.x402.org/protected https://www.x402.org/protected And you can see how to accept stablecoins or spend in the the examples https://github.com/coinbase/x402/tree/main/examples/typescript/servers/express https://github.com/coinbase/x402/tree/main/examples/typescri... https://github.com/coinbase/x402/blob/main/examples/typescript/clients/fetch/README.md https://github.com/coinbase/x402/blob/main/examples/typescri...
- Seattle3503 1y ago
  Interesting. I couldn't get that working with Coinbase wallet or Metamask from FF on Android. Is there a contract structure that obviates the need for Ether, or in there somewhere am I buying ether and USDC from somewhere and I just don't see that interaction?
Karrot_Kream 1y ago
USDC is also available on Solana and there's fees there too but they're pretty infentessimal. I've sent USDC from Coinbase to my Solana wallet and haven't had to pay any fees, so I presume it's not high enough for Coinbase to bother charging anyone. As far as addresses, yeah there's no way to avoid this. When you send cryptocurrency there's no real way to ensure that a wallet exists at the receiver's address nor that the person you want to reach is at this address, so you need to be careful that you are using the correct address. Ethereum uses ENS addresses to help deal with this. In that way this is a lot like a wire transfer in the US. If you use the wrong account or routing number then you're basically SOL. There's some verification you can do with receiver names but if your recipient is just at some bank and only the bank name comes up there's not much you can do.

Hasz 1y ago

I looked at this space about 3 years ago, what I want seems to still not exist I am looking to sell physical goods for low total amounts (<$10 usd) via a website. The most basic e-commerce you can imagine. In particular, what I want: - fast-ish payments (settlement in <2hr) - low/zero per-payment cost, low % fee - your average HN user could figure out how to use it to pay What I don't need: - subscriptions - payment-level fraud protection - payment-level kyc - customer financing (a la Klarna) - rev rec It seems like Fednow or lightning would meet some (most?) of these requirements, but I have not yet seen it in the wild.

Karrot_Kream 1y ago
Does stablecoin send/receiving via stablecoins or Lightning not work? Is it too difficult to get a user to pay? x402 should work just fine?
wmf 1y ago
Tempo might be good for this once it comes out.
egorfine 1y ago
> - payment-level fraud protection > - payment-level kyc No one needs that. Not a single party to the transaction, however remote or secondary. Every participant absolutely hates those. All of which doesn't matter, because the whole KYC/AML bullshit is forced on us and it is inevitable in the TradFi world.

selkin 1y ago

At the bottom of the page, it reads "By using this site, you agree to be bound by the CDP Terms of Service and Global Privacy Policy." Shouldn't that be at the top? If you want me to agree to a EULA no one would read, at least make a show as if you expect people to read it, don't hide it in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'.

webstrand 1y ago

My experience using this, I picked "Frame" from their list of clients. 1. Getting USDC from the faucet was pretty easy 2. Connecting Frame to my browser worked well, x402 was immediately detected 3. The first transaction got lost, I submitted it and the page spun forever. I had to make a second transaction to make it work. If this was real money, it'd be super easy to make people pay twice, because my first transaction is probably languishing in a mempool somewhere. 4. Frame is a terrible tool to suggest. It has no transaction log, so once you commit you can't use any of the tricks like "send another transaction with the same nonce, but with more gas" in case it got lost. It also appears to be largely unmaintained. 5. Second transaction worked fine, processing was nearly instant, the feedback was good.

cyanydeez 1y ago

Isnt the speed of the blockchain still rediculously slow?

kogasa240p 1y ago

What about GNU taler?

ranguna 1y ago
What about it?

leventhan 1y ago

A big step towards agentic payments and commerce.