After six months of real-world usage, the open payment standard x402 has received a major update, extending the protocol beyond single-request, exact-amount payments. The release adds support for wallet-based identity, automatic API discovery, dynamic payment recipients, expanded multi-chain and fiat support via CAIP standards, and a fully modular SDK for custom networks and payment schemes.
V2 is a major upgrade that makes the protocol more universal, more flexible, and easier to extend across networks, transports, identity models, and payment types. The spec is cleaner, more modular, and aligned with modern standards including CAIP and IETF header conventions, enabling a single interface for onchain and offchain payments.
x402 V2 offers a unified payment interface supporting stablecoins and tokens across multiple chains, including Base, Solana, and others, while maintaining compatibility with legacy payment rails such as ACH, SEPA, and card networks. In also introduces per-request routing to specific addresses, roles, or callback-based payout logic, enabling complex multi-step payment workflows.
Another enhancement in x402 V2 is the clear separation between the protocol specification, its SDK implementation, and facilitators (responsible for verifying and settling the payment on-chain), improving extensibility and enabling a modular, plug-in–based architecture.
The new standard also introduces wallet-based access, reusable sessions, and modular paywalls. Wallets support provides clients with greater flexibility, streamlining payment flows and reducing round trips and latency for previously purchased items. Modular paywalls enable developers to integrate and extend new backend payment logic, fostering a more extensible ecosystem.
Finally, x402 V2 improves the developer experience by simplifying configuration through aits modular design, adding support for choosing multiple facilitators simultaneously, and minimizing the amount of glue code or boilerplate required.
x402 is an open, web-native payment standard/protocol designed to make payments a first-class citizen of the internet. It enables micro-payments, pay-per-use, and machine-to-machine payments, allowing web apps, APIs, and autonomous agents (like AI bots) to pay for services directly over HTTP without traditional accounts, subscriptions, or complex payment flows. Within months, the protocol has processed over 100 million payment flows across APIs, web applications, and autonomous agents.
The protocol leverages the rarely used HTTP status code 402 (402 Payment Required) to signal when payment is required and to provide payment instructions within the response. By using x402, payments can be executed directly in the HTTP request–response flow, eliminating the need for users to be redirected to external payment pages or to rely on API keys and personal accounts.
Cloudflare, as one of the original partners in the x402 Foundation alongside Coinbase, integrated support for the protocol into its developer tools and infrastructure. This includes both the Agents SDK, which allows developers to build agents capable of making payments automatically using x402, as well as MCP servers that expose x402-enabled tools and enable services to return 402 Payment Required responses and accept x402 payments from clients.
