Beyond the open-source repos: the 19 companies, card networks and standards bodies building the commercial rails for machine payments — x402, AP2, ACP, USDC settlement, agent wallets and agent banking. Here's what each one actually ships, and how the pieces fit together.
An agent payment usually layers four things: an authorization standard (AP2 / ACP) that says an agent may spend, a payment rail (x402) that carries it over HTTP, a settlement asset (USDC), and a runtime — the facilitators and wallets that execute and hold funds. The companies below map onto those layers.
4 companies
Created x402 — the open HTTP-402 payment protocol for agents.
Coinbase authored x402, an open standard that turns the dormant HTTP 402 status code into real, instant stablecoin payments over HTTP. Its Developer Platform (CDP) ships the reference facilitator, agent wallets and USDC settlement on Base that most agent-payment projects start with.
Authored AP2 (Agent Payments Protocol) and the A2A protocol.
Google published AP2, an open protocol for authorizing agent-initiated payments with verifiable mandates, plus A2A for agent-to-agent communication. Together they define the authorization and messaging layer above payment rails like x402.
Co-authored ACP; brought agentic checkout into ChatGPT.
OpenAI co-created the Agentic Commerce Protocol with Stripe and shipped Instant Checkout in ChatGPT, letting users buy from merchants inside a conversation. It is the demand-side distribution channel for agent commerce.
Co-authored the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) with OpenAI.
Stripe co-created ACP — an open standard defining how AI agents complete purchases on behalf of buyers — alongside OpenAI. It also ships tooling so agents can transact on Stripe rails, extending human card billing toward agent-initiated commerce.
1 company
3 companies
Agent wallets, virtual cards and stablecoin infrastructure.
Crossmint is a payments platform built for AI agents: agent wallets, virtual cards and stablecoin rails as first-class primitives, so an agent can pay under user-controlled spend rules.
Secure payment rails for agentic commerce.
Nekuda builds payment rails that let agents pay merchants for agentic commerce. Its seed round included Madrona, Amex Ventures and Visa Ventures — a signal that card networks are investing in the agent-payments layer.
Task-based payment wallet for agents with human approval.
Payman is a payment wallet for AI agents built around accountable spending: configurable spend limits, human approval workflows and complete audit trails, with USD and USDC support.
6 companies
Coinbase’s L2 — default settlement chain for x402 demos.
Base is an Ethereum L2 incubated by Coinbase. Low fees and USDC liquidity made it the default chain for x402 tutorials, CDP facilitator traffic and many open-source agent-payment demos.
Issues USDC — the default settlement asset for agent payments.
Circle issues USDC, the regulated dollar stablecoin most agent-payment protocols settle in. Its developer tooling packages the financial primitives agents need to hold value and transact programmatically.
Verified identity + payment credentials for AI agents.
Skyfire gives AI agents a verified identity and payment credentials that work across the open web — so agents get authenticated access and can transact without cards, bank accounts, or a human in the loop.
Node and API infrastructure many x402 services settle on.
Alchemy provides production RPC, webhooks and APIs for Base and other chains. Agent-payment servers and facilitators commonly depend on this class of infra to read chain state and submit settlements.
Edge runtime popular for x402 middleware and paywalls.
Cloudflare Workers and related edge products are a common place to host x402 middleware, API paywalls and agent-facing endpoints close to users — including patterns documented on this site.
Payments-focused chain / ecosystem surfaced in agent tooling.
Tempo appears in the agent-payments landscape as a payments-oriented chain and explorer surface. This directory links related tooling for developers exploring alternative settlement environments.
4 companies
Square / Cash App parent — long-running agent & bitcoin payments research.
Block (Square, Cash App) has invested in open developer platforms and bitcoin/Lightning-adjacent payments. In the agent stack it is relevant via L402-style Lightning HTTP 402 heritage and broader fintech distribution.
Agent Pay — tokenized agent transactions on Mastercard.
Mastercard introduced Agent Pay, extending tokenization and network rails so AI agents can make payments with programmable controls and merchant trust.
Agent Toolkit — PayPal APIs inside agent frameworks.
PayPal ships an agent toolkit that exposes its APIs to AI agents through MCP, LangChain, CrewAI, the OpenAI Agents SDK and others — so an agent can create products, manage subscriptions and process payments programmatically.
Intelligent Commerce — enabling agents to pay on Visa.
Visa launched Intelligent Commerce, a program and APIs that let trusted AI agents transact on the Visa network with tokenized credentials and user-set controls.
1 company
A regulated bank and governance platform for AI agents.
Catena Labs is building a regulated banking and governance platform purpose-built for AI agents — payments, treasury and compliance for autonomous financial activity.
These companies define the landscape. The directory tracks the 1,600+ open-source projects that implement it — SDKs, facilitators, wallets and demos you can clone and run today.
The space spans protocol authors (Coinbase's x402, Google's AP2, Stripe + OpenAI's ACP), settlement rails (Circle's USDC), agent wallets and cards (Crossmint, Payman, Nekuda), card networks entering agent commerce (Visa Intelligent Commerce, Mastercard Agent Pay, PayPal's agent toolkit) and regulated agent banking (Catena Labs). This page tracks 19 of them with a short, factual profile each.
A protocol (x402, AP2, ACP) is the open standard that defines how an agent payment is expressed and authorized. A facilitator is the service that verifies a payment and settles it on-chain on behalf of your server. One is the spec; the other is the runtime that executes it.
Mostly complement. AP2/ACP handle authorization ("this agent may pay up to $X for Y"), x402 is the HTTP payment rail, USDC is the settlement asset, and wallets/facilitators are the runtime. A real deployment usually combines several — e.g. an AP2 mandate, an x402 request, a Coinbase facilitator and USDC on Base.
No. This page lists companies and standards bodies. The main directory tracks 1,600+ open-source repos (SDKs, facilitators, demos) that implement these protocols. Use the companies page to understand the landscape, then drill into the directory for code you can run.
Company profiles are editorial summaries compiled from each company's public materials. Something missing or out of date? Let us know →