Cardano Joins AI Agent Payments Race with x402 Integration
Cardano has joined the growing list of cryptocurrencies that support AI agent payments through the x402 standard. The Cardano Foundation announced on September 21 that the integration was available through npm, allowing developers to build applications and agents that can send and receive ADA or Cardano native tokens over HTTP.
The integration makes Cardano part of the official x402 SDK, enabling an application or agent to pay for API requests without creating an account, obtaining an API key, or using a checkout page. This development puts Cardano alongside Solana and XRP Ledger in the emerging market for automated internet payments.
According to the foundation, Cardano's specification was merged in June, with engineers subsequently developing the client, server, and facilitator components. The integration is available through npm install @x402/cardano, and the demo and facilitator are open source, with TypeScript being the first supported language, while Python support is planned next.
Cardano's jump onto the x402 bandwagon follows Ripple's joining of the Linux Foundation-hosted x402 Foundation in July, alongside other companies working on the protocol, including Coinbase and Circle. However, analyst Jamie Coutts measured x402 settlement volume as down 93% from the beginning of the year to August.