What Stripe builds for agent payments
Stripe’s core product remains card-rail billing for humans. ACP is its answer to agents: a shared protocol (with OpenAI and later Meta) for how an agent discovers a merchant offer, gets buyer authorization, and completes a purchase without a traditional checkout UI.
For pure machine-to-machine micropayments, Stripe’s per-transaction fees still lose to x402 + USDC. Keep Stripe for human customers and subscriptions; use agent-native rails for per-request agent spend. See our alternatives guide for the open-source side.