A new competition is emerging to build payment infrastructure for AI agents, with Bitcoin’s Lightning-based L402 protocol facing off against Coinbase-backed x402 built on Ethereum-based stablecoin systems.
The race centres on enabling machine-to-machine micropayments for services such as APIs, data access, and compute resources, which traditional payment systems designed for humans struggle to support.
Lightning Labs released an open-source toolkit allowing AI agents to pay for services natively on the Lightning Network using the L402 protocol, enabling transactions to settle in milliseconds with fees measured in fractions of a cent.
The system allows agents to automatically discover paid APIs, pay Lightning invoices, and receive cryptographic proof of payment without human intervention or account creation.
Coinbase has taken a different approach through its x402 protocol, launching agent-specific wallet infrastructure designed to enable stablecoin payments such as USDC for automated services.
The x402 ecosystem has attracted industry support, with companies including Cloudflare integrating the standard to enable websites to accept machine-based payments.