Agentic Payments Are Growing, but Most x402 Payments Aren’t From AI Agents

The emerging infrastructure for autonomous artificial intelligence agents to spend money online may be developing faster than the agents themselves.

A new analysis by blockchain intelligence company TRM Labs found that only a fraction of payments flowing through x402, one of the most prominent protocols designed for machine-to-machine commerce, can be attributed to autonomous AI agents.

TRM examined about $52.7 million in value across 198.9 million x402 settlement transactions on the Base, Solana and Polygon blockchains starting in May 2025, the analysis said. After filtering out activity unlikely to represent genuine commerce, the firm estimated that just 0.6% to 7.5% of the remaining payment value appeared to be agentic.

The findings challenge a common assumption that rising x402 transaction volumes provide a proxy for the growth of autonomous commerce. Ordinary software scripts, scheduled processes and even self-dealing can produce blockchain records indistinguishable from payments initiated by AI agents, Decrypt reported Sunday (Sept. 13) in its summary of the research.

Launched by Coinbase in 2025, x402 effectively turns the long-dormant HTTP “402 Payment Required” status code into an internet-native payment mechanism. When a buyer or bot requests an online resource, such as an API call, the server responds with a price. The buyer then resubmits the request with a signed payment authorization. A facilitator verifies the authorization, broadcasts the transaction to a blockchain and pays the network fee. Most such services operate on a pay-per-call basis.