Stripe taps Base to power x402 AI payment handshakes

Stripe has launched x402 payments on Base to enable automated handshakes between AI agents transacting using Circle’s USDC. Jeff Weinstein, the product manager at Stripe, says AI agents are becoming increasingly popular as a new category of users to build for and/or sell to.

According to Weinstein, Stripe is rolling out a preview of machine payments, a way for developers to directly charge agents with a few lines of code. The Stripe product manager also announced that his company is releasing an open-source CLI (Command Line Interface) called “Purl” for users and bots to test machine payments in the terminal, along with Python and Node samples. 

Stripe is building economic infrastructure to help businesses thrive in the near future, where AI agents, humans, and businesses all transact, according to Weinstein. He also observes that while there are currently billions of human users, trillions of autonomous AI agents are expected, some of which are now clawing their way onto Mac minis. 

Businesses to charge AI agents via Stripe’s PaymentIntents API

Weinstein says that businesses will now be able to charge AI agents for their API usage, MCP calls, or HTTP requests, and accept machine payments via Stripe’s regular ol’ Payment Intent API. Additionally, there will also be agent-specific pricing plans, alongside traditional subscriptions and invoices.

To charge AI agents, businesses will first be required to create a PaymentIntent, according to Weinstein. Stripe will generate a unique deposit address per transaction and return it to an AI agent together with instructions to send funds or a payment token. Businesses will also be able to track transactions through API, Dashboard, or Webhook before funds are settled in their default Stripe balances.

Weinstein also mentioned that the new feature is rolling out to a handful of early developers starting February 11. He requested feedback via email, promising a wider release to all users over the coming weeks. Meanwhile, some claim that session-key spend and merchant allowlists feel like the missing default for AI agent payments. They believe it would be way easier for Stripe to ship the updates “in prod” if that lands early.

Stripe increases focus on expanding agent economy

Stripe’s newly launched product reflects its growing focus on what it calls the “agent economy”, where software programs operate autonomously and manage their own finances. The company says AI agents are expected to buy data, computing resources, and digital services without human intervention. However, support is now focused on USDC on Base, which offers predictable, stable pricing. 

On the other hand, industry observers view the move as another sign that AI, Fintech, and crypto are converging more rapidly. Services can now be priced per request, per action, and per second, instead of relying on monthly prepaid credits or plans.

Meanwhile, Ahmed Gharib, Stripe’s head of agentic commerce, claims that his company is focused on creating industry standards for agentic transactions. The company announced the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) in September last year, introducing the first live standard that enables programmatic commerce flows between AI agents and businesses. Stripe and OpenAI built ACP to integrate it with existing commerce. 

Meanwhile, Google introduced AP2 (Agent Payment Protocol), which focuses on authorization rather than payments themselves. According to Google, AI agents need to prove that the money spent reflects the user’s intent. AP2 defines how to express user-granted permissions in a verifiable way, for instance, “This AI can spend a maximum of $100 per day and only on data APIs and Netflix subscriptions.” Google’s AP2 is a significant step toward a future in which AI agents are meaningful economic actors, whether on behalf of humans, businesses, or themselves, according to Sreeram Kannan, the founder and CEO of Eigen Labs.

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