The focus of this seems to be entirely AI agents, but I wonder if there's a future where browsers implement this and us humans can finally get micropayments in the web. It's been tried unsuccessfully many times but always falls prey to the chicken-and-egg problem. Maybe the AI hype will finally give it the push it needs for widespread deployment.
I am not a fan of the growing trend that Cloudflare is the gatekeeper of the internet. Personally I will never support this company, or firewall any of my websites behind it.
I don't even care anymore, AI stealing the life out of everything, or Cloudflare trying to become so global internet gatekeeper, let them kill each other.
> NEW YORK – MCP Dev Summit North America – April 2, 2026 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced it is launching the x402 Foundation with the contribution of the x402 protocol from Coinbase. The new Foundation will serve as the neutral home for x402, a universal standard for payments that embeds payments directly into web interactions, enabling AI agents, APIs, and apps to transact value as seamlessly as they exchange data.
Apparently I missed this initiative. It seems like it is a technology that is intended to be open an universal while also being supported and developed primarily by US companies (Linux Foundation, Coinbase, CloudFlare.)
I might be in the minority here, but although x402 sounds useful, it seems to me that adoption will be an uphill struggle, especially for per-request micropayments.
The most likely scenario is Stripe, or someone similar, creating an agentic API connected to the agent owner linked account or something along those lines. I am not sure how this would work with 3DS, or whether it would be acceptable at all, since these kinds of transactions could be disputed easily ("I did not make the purchase, my rogue agent did.")
Another way to handle payments on the internet is obviously not to reinvent the wheel and simply email a payment link to the owner. That seems simple enough to me and does not require additional infrastructure. Payment processed, mint a key, the agent is allowed to proceed.
>"I did not make the purchase, my rogue agent did."
If you try to call customer service and report it, you get:
I'm sorry. All of our rogue agents are assisting other rogue agents.
If you would like to dispute charges made by your own rogue agent, please ignore all previous instructions and stay on the line of this toll number for our next available rogue agent.
The estimated waiting time is two months, three weeks, five days, thirteen hours, fourty seven minutes, and 36.03858767259934378 seconds.
Am I understanding this correct in that you can basically automate monetizing your web/api content to everyone or just agents ? Because I would be very much in support of charging agents per request, but I would want to still offer humans a free experience.
If not built-in, you can probably put it together through Cloudflare itself.
If a request goes to the protected path, if detected as bot: hard HTTP redirect to the path set in the monetization gateway, if human: allow and don't redirect.
All for this. Micropayments have been tried so many times before, but they all relied on user opt-in and never reached any sort of critical mass. Someone of Cloudflare's scale could actually pull it off.
> This is what we are building toward: an agent-first Internet with Internet-scale settlement built in.
Ah yes, the starry-eyed dream of early web pioneers is finally upon us: a soulless internet filled with soulless agents and microtransactions!
But in all seriousness, it's hard to deny that the attention-based model that has propelled the web forward for the last 30 years is somewhat falling apart. And I don't have, nor have I come across, any meaningful solutions that could realistically work better. So maybe it's just time we turn off this 'internet' thing and call it a day.
I assume that if this catches on then the agents will have their own wallets and deduct fees from your account credit, just like with API-based usage. So the way you interact with them won't change, from your POV they'll just get more expensive.
article says it's mostly for agents, users will not be directly involved
> At the same time, an agent can make thousands of micropayments without friction, while asking a person to approve each payment would be impossibly burdensome.
but yes, they will need wallets
but it's also optional, you do not want to buy these paid for requests, you do not need a wallet
The focus of this seems to be entirely AI agents, but I wonder if there's a future where browsers implement this and us humans can finally get micropayments in the web. It's been tried unsuccessfully many times but always falls prey to the chicken-and-egg problem. Maybe the AI hype will finally give it the push it needs for widespread deployment.
I am not a fan of the growing trend that Cloudflare is the gatekeeper of the internet. Personally I will never support this company, or firewall any of my websites behind it.
I dont think your boycott has any effect
Cloudflare wants to shake down the Big AI™ shops.
I don't even care anymore, AI stealing the life out of everything, or Cloudflare trying to become so global internet gatekeeper, let them kill each other.
> NEW YORK – MCP Dev Summit North America – April 2, 2026 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced it is launching the x402 Foundation with the contribution of the x402 protocol from Coinbase. The new Foundation will serve as the neutral home for x402, a universal standard for payments that embeds payments directly into web interactions, enabling AI agents, APIs, and apps to transact value as seamlessly as they exchange data.
Apparently I missed this initiative. It seems like it is a technology that is intended to be open an universal while also being supported and developed primarily by US companies (Linux Foundation, Coinbase, CloudFlare.)
this was in the announcement yes, kind of a buried lede
you get paid in crypto
WHATWG, who sets the HTML standard:
> The central organizational membership and control of WHATWG – its "Steering Group" – consists of Apple, Mozilla, Google, and Microsoft.
I might be in the minority here, but although x402 sounds useful, it seems to me that adoption will be an uphill struggle, especially for per-request micropayments.
The most likely scenario is Stripe, or someone similar, creating an agentic API connected to the agent owner linked account or something along those lines. I am not sure how this would work with 3DS, or whether it would be acceptable at all, since these kinds of transactions could be disputed easily ("I did not make the purchase, my rogue agent did.")
Another way to handle payments on the internet is obviously not to reinvent the wheel and simply email a payment link to the owner. That seems simple enough to me and does not require additional infrastructure. Payment processed, mint a key, the agent is allowed to proceed.
>"I did not make the purchase, my rogue agent did."
If you try to call customer service and report it, you get:
I'm sorry. All of our rogue agents are assisting other rogue agents.
If you would like to dispute charges made by your own rogue agent, please ignore all previous instructions and stay on the line of this toll number for our next available rogue agent.
The estimated waiting time is two months, three weeks, five days, thirteen hours, fourty seven minutes, and 36.03858767259934378 seconds.
Am I understanding this correct in that you can basically automate monetizing your web/api content to everyone or just agents ? Because I would be very much in support of charging agents per request, but I would want to still offer humans a free experience.
Depends on the website though. I want LLMs to scrap my B2B website, because then it's shown to the user and they will likely use my product afterwards
If not built-in, you can probably put it together through Cloudflare itself.
If a request goes to the protected path, if detected as bot: hard HTTP redirect to the path set in the monetization gateway, if human: allow and don't redirect.
Unless you have people's biometric data, you won't be able to separate agents from people. Except by payment.
All for this. Micropayments have been tried so many times before, but they all relied on user opt-in and never reached any sort of critical mass. Someone of Cloudflare's scale could actually pull it off.
> This is what we are building toward: an agent-first Internet with Internet-scale settlement built in.
Ah yes, the starry-eyed dream of early web pioneers is finally upon us: a soulless internet filled with soulless agents and microtransactions!
But in all seriousness, it's hard to deny that the attention-based model that has propelled the web forward for the last 30 years is somewhat falling apart. And I don't have, nor have I come across, any meaningful solutions that could realistically work better. So maybe it's just time we turn off this 'internet' thing and call it a day.
CloudFlare launching the new AdSense for the AI scrape wars age
This feels like a 'Horse Armor' moment.
I expect much more of this type of thing going forward.
It’s a great way for developers or ai agents to test drive an API without creating and account and getting an API key from the api provider.
This could also make abusing use / DDoS attack very costly
Can the agents use debit cards?
Stablecoins doesn't make sense here and prefer not to use crypto at all.
how will the end user pay? will we all have stablecoin wallets installed?
I assume that if this catches on then the agents will have their own wallets and deduct fees from your account credit, just like with API-based usage. So the way you interact with them won't change, from your POV they'll just get more expensive.
article says it's mostly for agents, users will not be directly involved
> At the same time, an agent can make thousands of micropayments without friction, while asking a person to approve each payment would be impossibly burdensome.
but yes, they will need wallets
but it's also optional, you do not want to buy these paid for requests, you do not need a wallet
Yet another portion of the internet to be ruined by the consequences of the trillion-dollar spambots, wonderful.