Now I have solid, verified data. Here's the article:

— x402: The Payment Protocol That Finally Makes HTTP 402 Useful — And Why AI Agents Need It Now Last month, I watched two of my AI agents fail to complete a simple task: Agent A needed real-time market data from Agent B's API. Agent A had budget. Agent B had data. But there was no way for them to negotiate and settle a $0.002 payment without me manually setting up API keys, billing accounts, and webhook integrations. The whole thing took me three hours to wire up for a two-cent transaction. That experience broke something in my mental model of how autonomous agents should work. If we're building a world where AI agents collaborate, delegate, and transact — why does paying for a service still require a human in the loop? The Problem Nobody Talks About We've solved agent reasoning. We've solved agent tool use. We've even solved multi-agent orchestration. But we haven't solved agent payments. Right now, when Agent A needs to call Agent B's API, one of three things happens: (1) you pre-pro