A compliant platform's x402 payment protocol releases V2 version, supporting multi-chain and AI-ready upgrades

Source: ETHNews Original Title: Coinbase’s x402 Payments Protocol Releases V2 With Multi-Chain and AI-Ready Upgrades Original Link: https://www.ethnews.com/coinbases-x402-payments-protocol-releases-v2-with-multi-chain-and-ai-ready-upgrades/ The x402 payments protocol, designed for autonomous machine-to-machine payments, has released its V2 upgrade following six months of real-world deployment.

Since its initial rollout, the protocol has processed more than 100 million payments across APIs, AI agents, and web services, momentum that directly shaped the enhancements introduced on December 11, 2025.

A Multi-Chain Standard for Machine Payments

V2 standardizes how networks and assets are identified, allowing a single payment format to function across multiple blockchains, including Base, Solana, and future integrations, alongside traditional payment systems such as ACH and card networks. This design makes x402 a unified payment layer for both crypto-native and legacy infrastructures.

The upgrade reflects a broader shift toward programmable payments, where services and AI agents need consistent pathways to perform transactions without human intervention.

Wallet-Controlled Identity and Reusable Sessions

One of the most consequential updates is the introduction of wallet-based sessions, enabling subscription-like access and repeated use of a purchased resource without restarting the full payment flow.

For high-frequency workloads, such as LLM inference, automated API calls, and autonomous agent operations, this drastically reduces overhead and eliminates unnecessary on-chain interactions. It also strengthens identity by tying sessions directly to wallet ownership rather than brittle API keys.

A Modular Architecture Built for Expansion

V2 introduces a cleaner separation between clients, servers, and facilitators, giving developers greater freedom to add:

• new blockchains
• new assets
• new payment schemes

Each component can now be added as an isolated module without altering the foundation of the protocol. This modularity is key to positioning x402 as an extensible standard for both crypto and traditional payment ecosystems.

Automatic Discovery for AI-Driven Economies

The new Discovery extension allows x402-enabled services to expose metadata that facilitators can crawl and index. This makes it possible for AI agents to automatically discover services, understand pricing, and initiate payments, an essential capability as autonomous agents become more active participants in digital markets.

Developer Experience Upgrades

Reference SDKs have been fully rewritten to be more plug-in driven, reducing friction and allowing developers to focus on business logic rather than integration code. The improvements reflect feedback from early adopters who used x402 in production at scale.

Broader Context: The Revival of HTTP 402

The x402 protocol breathes new life into the long-unused HTTP 402: Payment Required status code, turning it into a real payment mechanism for the modern internet. Transactions typically settle using stablecoins, most often USDC, executed on low-fee Layer 2 networks like Base, making them fast, programmable, and inexpensive.

The initiative is backed by an impressive coalition of tech and finance leaders, including Cloudflare, Google, and Visa, who joined the x402 Foundation in September 2025 to advance the protocol as an open standard.

As adoption grows and V2 expands x402’s capabilities, the protocol is increasingly positioned as a foundational layer for AI economy payments, bridging blockchain, web infrastructure, and traditional financial rails in a single unified model.