Linux Foundation is Launching the x402 Foundation and Welcoming the Contribution of the x402 Protocol

New Foundation will steward the open x402 protocol for seamless payments over HTTP

NEW YORK, April 2, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- MCP Dev Summit North America – April 2, 2026 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced it is launching the x402 Foundation with the contribution of the x402 protocol from Coinbase. The new Foundation will serve as the neutral home for x402, a universal standard for payments that embeds payments directly into web interactions, enabling AI agents, APIs, and apps to transact value as seamlessly as they exchange data.

The x402 protocol, created by Coinbase, is moving to the Linux Foundation. The x402 Foundation, the standard's governing body, initially developed by Coinbase, Cloudflare, and Stripe, is launching with a broad set of industry participants as it migrates toward an open source model for the benefit of all internet-native payments.

Membership will be comprised of participants from multiple verticals with initial intent and support being expressed by Adyen, Amazon Web Services, American Express, Ampersend.ai, Base, Circle, Cloudflare, Coinbase, Fiserv Merchant Solutions, Google, KakaoPay, Mastercard, Merit Systems, Microsoft, Polygon Labs, PPRO, Shopify, Sierra, Solana Foundation, Stripe, thirdweb, and Visa.

"The internet was built on open protocols," said Jim Zemlin, CEO of the Linux Foundation. "The x402 Foundation will create an open, community-governed home to develop these capabilities in the open, ensuring they evolve with transparency, interoperability, and broad participation across the ecosystem."

Under Linux Foundation governance, the x402 protocol will remain vendor neutral, fostering transparent, community-driven growth, ensuring accessibility, and supporting sustainability.

To learn more about the x402 Foundation and membership opportunities, visit www.linuxfoundation.org/x402foundation/.

Supporting Quotes
"x402 moves us toward a more open financial system where sending value online is as simple as sending an email. By backing the x402 Foundation, we're helping build the native payment layer the internet has never had - one that's global, programmable, and always on."
– Shan Aggarwal, Chief Business Officer, Coinbase

"The Internet was built on open standards, but for too long, the payment layer of the web has been fragmented and proprietary. By moving the x402 protocol under the stewardship of the Linux Foundation, we are ensuring that the future of agentic commerce remains neutral, interoperable, and accessible to everyone. Cloudflare is committed to providing the secure, global infrastructure needed to turn this protocol into a fundamental pillar of how value moves across the Internet."
– Stephanie Cohen, Chief Strategy Officer, Cloudflare

"Stripe is building financial infrastructure for the agentic commerce era, and open protocols are an important part of creating a thriving ecosystem. We're looking forward to collaborating with the x402 community to help businesses accept payments from agents at scale."
– Kevin Miller, Business Lead, Payments, Stripe

"Adyen is joining the x402 Foundation because we believe open, interoperable standards are the right foundation for agentic commerce. We look forward to advocating for our merchants within the Foundation, ensuring that as these standards evolve, merchant outcomes remain front and center and 'payments over HTTP' carry the trust, transparency and reliability that global businesses require to embrace autonomous commerce."
– Tom Adams, Chief Technology Office, Adyen

"As AI agents become autonomous participants in the digital economy, the ability to execute secure, frictionless payments is no longer optional – it's foundational. At AWS, we see protocols like x402 as an important step toward making payments a native part of agent workflows, and we're excited by the potential for open standards to help agents discover, access, and transact with services more seamlessly. We are excited to be part of the x402 Foundation announcement and to work alongside industry leaders to make agent-native payments a reality for developers and enterprises worldwide."
– Preethi C N, Director AgentCore, Amazon Web Services

"Open standards will play a critical role in the next generation of digital commerce. We're pleased to support the x402 Foundation and collaborate with industry partners to help build an interoperable, secure, and scalable approach to payments on the internet."
– Luke Gebb, Executive Vice President of Global Innovation, American Express

"At Circle, we believe internet-native financial infrastructure should be open, programmable, and always on. x402 is an important step toward that vision, and we're pleased to support the x402 Foundation."
– Kash Razzaghi, Chief Commercial Officer, Circle

"Fiserv processes payments for millions of merchants – from the corner store to global enterprises. x402 gives us an open, interoperable foundation to ensure that as commerce becomes more automated and agent-driven, every one of those merchants can participate. We're supporting the x402 Foundation because the payment layer of the agentic web should work for businesses of all sizes, without needing massive re-engineering of their commerce capabilities."
– Sanjay Saraf, Chief Product Officer, Fiserv Merchant Solutions

"The shift toward agentic commerce requires cloud infrastructure that is as open as the protocols it supports. By joining the x402 Foundation, Google is reinforcing its commitment to interoperable standards that enable secure, AI-driven transactions across platforms."
– James Tromans, Managing Director, Web3 and Digital Assets, Google Cloud

"Mastercard supports the development of open, interoperable standards that prioritize transparency and accessibility. As agent‑to‑agent transactions evolve, collaboration with the x402 Foundation to support multiple payment types – from cards to digital currencies – will be critical."
– Sherri Haymond, Global Head of Digital Commercialization, Mastercard

"Shopify powers millions of businesses, and as commerce evolves, so does our infrastructure. By supporting open protocols and working with industry leaders in the x402 community, we're ensuring every merchant has access to the tools shaping the future of agentic commerce."
– Rohit Mishra, Vice President of Product, Shopify

"Today, Solana is a financial infrastructure accessible to 5.5 billion people on the internet. Looking forward, we are focused on building for the future user in the agentic era. With AI agents increasingly consuming internet services, Solana provides the infrastructure to meet that demand at scale with high throughput, fast finality and low fees. Solana has been one of the earliest adopters of x402, driving nearly 65% of x402 transaction volume this year, and has a growing ecosystem building products with x402 payments. We're eager to support the x402 Foundation to build the future of agentic payments and onboard more developers, merchants, and agents to pay-per-request models with stablecoins."
– Rishin Sharma, Head of AI Growth, Solana Foundation

"As commerce becomes increasingly agent‑driven, payments need to be as open and interoperable as the web itself. By supporting the x402 Foundation, Visa is working to ensure that trusted and secure payments can happen seamlessly, with cards or stablecoins, wherever AI agents transact."
– Rubail Birwadker, Global Head of Growth Products and Strategic Partnerships, Visa

About the Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation is the world's leading home for collaboration on open source software, hardware, standards, and data. Linux Foundation projects, including Linux, Kubernetes, Model Context Protocol (MCP), OpenChain, OpenSearch, OpenSSF, OpenStack, PyTorch, Ray, RISC-V, SPDX and Zephyr, provide the foundation for global infrastructure. The Linux Foundation is focused on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users, and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

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