Cardano Joins x402 Protocol for Pay-Per-Use Payments

The Cardano Foundation has successfully integrated its ADA cryptocurrency into the x402 protocol, allowing for pay-per-use payments within HTTP requests. This integration enables AI agents and applications to use ADA or Cardano-issued tokens to pay for resources or services without relying on conventional account-based billing flows.

The addition of Cardano to the x402 software kit was made possible by the facilitator component, which verifies and settles signed transactions under the protocol's payment scheme. The facilitator has completed an end-to-end real transaction on a pre-production network but has not yet been run on mainnet.

The x402 protocol is designed to standardize internet-native payments by embedding payment instructions into HTTP interactions for AI agents, APIs, and applications. Cardano's integration with this protocol follows the addition of its specification to the x402 Foundation repository and includes optional support for Masumi smart-contract functions such as identity, refunds, disputes, decision logging, and registries.