Coinbase and AWS let publishers accept agents as customers via x402

Coinbase and AWS have unveiled a new integration that allows website publishers, API providers and digital services on AWS CloudFront and WAF to charge AI agents for content using the x402 payment protocol. The companies say the feature can be enabled from a publisher's existing AWS configuration, without adding new infrastructure or payment accounts.

When an AI agent requests content, the server returns an HTTP 402 Payment Required response with details on what to pay and how. The agent then submits payment, Coinbase's x402 Facilitator verifies it onchain, and the content is served. Although USDC on Base is the natural starting point, the protocol is payment-method agnostic and can support other digital assets, additional blockchains and eventually fiat rails. It also accommodates batch settlement for high-frequency micropayments, subscription billing for recurring access, and variable-rate pricing for usage-based workloads such as inference or compute-heavy API calls.

The launch extends work the companies began earlier this year with AWS's Web Bot Authentication, which was designed to identify AI traffic. Nishit Sawhney, general manager of AWS Edge Services, said the integration lets publishers answer three questions before serving content: who the agent is, what its intent is, and whether it is authorized to pay. Brian Foster, head of infrastructure growth at Coinbase, said the goal is to give the internet a native payment layer for agents as they become a major source of web activity, allowing publishers to capture value from that growing segment.

x402 is an open standard that Coinbase incubated and has since spun out into an independent foundation under the Linux Foundation. AWS is a founding member, along with more than 20 other companies in cloud infrastructure, AI and financial services. No single company controls the standard, which the partners say should encourage broad adoption and innovation.

For discovery, the x402 Bazaar serves as an open, searchable registry of x402-enabled endpoints, giving agents and developers visibility into pricing and capabilities. Coinbase also operates Agentic.Market, a curated catalog of vetted x402 services for enterprise agentic workflows. The Coinbase Facilitator is built to meet enterprise requirements including high availability, onchain USDC settlement across top blockchain networks, and built-in compliance screening on every transaction.