AI Payments Decline by 93% This Year for x402

[Reporter Myungjeong Seon, Block Media] Expectations for an 'agentic economy' where artificial intelligence (AI) agents purchase goods and services without human intervention are growing, but actual payment activities have yet to meet these expectations. The payment volume of the AI agent payment protocol x402 has plummeted by 93% this year. Analysts suggest that the AI agent payment market remains in its early stages, unable to keep pace with the speed of technology and infrastructure development.

x402, Once Surpassing $1 Million Daily, Averaged $41,800 Over the Last Week

According to Crypto Potato on the 12th (local time), market analyst Jamie Kutz cited data from Helios Analytics, revealing that the daily payment volume of x402 has decreased by 93% this year.

x402 is a payment protocol designed for AI agents to automatically make payments after utilizing services such as websites or application programming interfaces (APIs). Developed by Coinbase, it implements payment functions based on the internet communication standard HTTP.

The trading activity of x402 surged in the fourth quarter of last year. Between October and December 2025, the daily payment volume approached $800,000 multiple times, exceeding $1 million in some periods.

However, trading volume sharply declined after December last year. For most of this year, it has remained at low levels, with the recent average payment volume over the last week dropping to about $41,800. The most recently provisionally recorded daily payment amount is approximately $28,400.

Over a three-month period, the payment volume of x402 has decreased by 55%. Compared to a year ago, it has increased 358 times, but analysts note that the previous trading volume was very low, limiting its usefulness as an indicator of current market activity.

Kutz views these figures as a 'reality check' against claims that the agentic economy has already begun in earnest. The sharp increase in trading volume observed at the end of last year likely relied significantly on initial testing and experimental demand rather than sustained real demand.

Cloudflare Adopts x402... Infrastructure Expands Instead

Despite the decrease in trading volume, the infrastructure for AI agent payments is expanding.

Cloudflare launched the 'Monetization Gateway' on the 1st of last month. This service allows for charging fees for tools used in webpage and API dataset model context protocols (MCP).

This service utilizes x402 for stablecoin payments. When AI agents call paid data or APIs, it can measure usage and automatically process payments accordingly.

While the existing 'Pay Per Crawl' service focused on charging costs for AI bots accessing websites, the Monetization Gateway has broadened its scope. It can charge costs based on usage for all service users, including not only humans but also AI agents.

Kutz predicts that the current decrease in trading volume does not indicate a long-term recession, based on the expansion of such infrastructure. If the software environment connecting AI agents to actual work spreads, there is a possibility that related activities will increase again starting in the fourth quarter of this year.

Ripple Joins x402 Ecosystem... Discrepancy Between Technology Expansion and Actual Usage

Movements to utilize x402 as the AI payment standard continue in the virtual asset industry.

On the 14th of last month, Ripple joined the x402 Foundation, operated by the Linux Foundation, as a major member. The x402 Foundation was established to promote the open standard and ecosystem expansion of the protocol developed by Coinbase.

Marcus Infranger, Senior Vice President of RippleX, stated, "Open standards like x402 help establish a foundation for reliable and interoperable machine-to-machine payments."

Ripple's XRP Ledger (XRPL) also supports x402. This allows AI agents to build systems that automatically transact using XRP or Ripple's stablecoin RLUSD. Ripple previously unveiled an AI starter kit to support the development of autonomous payment applications.

Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) also identified x402 as one of the key payment technologies for the AI agent economy last December. The logic was that for AI to perform economic activities without human intervention, a programmable payment system capable of transferring value at internet-like speeds is necessary.

However, about eight months later, actual payment volumes have significantly decreased from the peak at the end of last year. While technological development and corporate participation are expanding, the economic activities of AI agents using these technologies have yet to generate sufficient trading volumes.

The future growth of x402 is expected to depend not merely on the number of companies supporting the protocol but on how frequently AI agents utilize actual paid services.

While payment infrastructure is expanding around Cloudflare and Ripple, if the trading volume, which has decreased by 93% this year, does not recover, it will be difficult to assess that the AI agent payment market has entered a full commercialization stage.

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