A major upgrade to Coinbase’s machine-to-machine payments protocol has arrived. The company has officially rolled out x402 V2, a revamped version of its AI-native payments standard designed to let automated services settle transactions across crypto and traditional financial networks with far less friction.
Coinbase revealed the update on December 11, 2025, noting that x402 has already handled over 100 million API payments across web services, AI agents and automated workflows in just six months since launch.
A Payment Format That Works Across Chains — and Beyond Crypto
One of the biggest shifts in V2 is the standardization of network and asset IDs. This lets a single payment format support a wide range of rails, from Base and Solana to stablecoin networks, ACH systems and even card payments.
The goal is to make x402 a unified settlement layer—a common language for both crypto-native systems and legacy financial infrastructure.
Wallet Sessions Bring Subscription-Style Access
Another major feature in V2 is wallet-based sessions, which function like reusable access passes. Instead of restarting a blockchain payment flow every time an API or AI agent makes a call, a session tied to a user’s wallet can authorize repeated usage.
This is aimed at high-volume tasks—LLM inference, automated API activity, autonomous agents—where restarting payments adds unnecessary overhead. Coinbase says this approach reduces on-chain interactions while keeping ownership tied to the wallet instead of API keys.
Modular Architecture and Better Service Discovery
V2 also creates clearer separation between clients, servers and facilitators. Developers can now plug in new chains, payment methods or assets as standalone modules without reworking the protocol itself.
To help AI systems navigate the ecosystem, x402 now includes a Discovery extension. Services using x402 can publish metadata—pricing, capabilities, endpoint descriptions—which facilitators can index. That means AI agents can automatically find services and initiate payments with minimal human oversight.
Rebuilt SDKs and Industry-Backed Development
The reference SDKs were rewritten with a plug-in architecture shaped by feedback from early production users. And the ecosystem behind x402 is growing: the x402 Foundation, created in September 2025, now includes Cloudflare, Google and Visa as members helping support the open standard.
Most transactions on x402 still settle using stablecoins on Layer 2 networks like Base, while leveraging the HTTP 402 “Payment Required” status as a built-in trigger for AI-driven settlement.
With V2, Coinbase is positioning x402 as a key infrastructure layer for the next wave of autonomous, AI-powered commerce—bridging the gap between crypto, traditional payment networks and machine-to-machine transactions.
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