Original Article Title: "IOSG Weekly Brief | Stripe for Agents: From Protocol Stack to Payment Ecosystem Agent Investment Map"

Original Article Author: Jacob Zhao, IOSG Ventures

Agentic Commerce refers to a full-process business system where AI agents autonomously perform service discovery, trust assessment, order generation, payment authorization, and final settlement. It no longer relies on human step-by-step operations or information input, but is carried out by agents autonomously collaborating, ordering, paying, and fulfilling across platforms and systems, forming a machine-to-machine (M2M) commerce ecosystem.

In the crypto space, the most practical application scenarios are currently mainly focused on stablecoin payments and DeFi. Therefore, in the process of integrating Crypto and AI, the two most valuable paths are: AgentFi, which relies on existing mature DeFi protocols in the short term, and Agent Payment, which is gradually improved around stablecoin settlements, relying on protocols such as ACP/AP2/x402/ERC-8004 in the medium to long term.

In the short term, Agentic Commerce is constrained by protocol maturity, regulatory differences, merchant and user acceptance, making it difficult to scale rapidly. However, in the long run, payment is the underlying anchor of all business ecosystems, making Agentic Commerce the most valuable in the long term.

Agentic Commerce Payment System and Use Cases

In the Agentic Commerce system, the real-world merchant network is the most significant value scenario. Regardless of how AI agents evolve, the traditional fiat payment system (Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, bank transfers) and the rapidly growing stablecoin system (USDC, x402) will coexist in the long term, jointly forming the foundation of Agentic Commerce.

Traditional Fiat Payment vs Stablecoin Payment Comparison

Real-world merchants—from e-commerce, subscriptions, SaaS to travel, content payments, and enterprise procurement—carry trillion-dollar-level demand and are the core value source for AI agents to automatically compare prices, renew subscriptions, and make purchases. In the short term, mainstream consumer and enterprise purchases will still be predominantly governed by the traditional fiat payment system.

The core obstacle preventing stablecoins from achieving scalability in real-world business is not technological, but rather regulation (KYC/AML, tax, consumer protection), merchant accounting (stablecoin nonrecourse), and the lack of dispute resolution mechanisms for irreversible payments. Due to these structural limitations, stablecoins are short-term unlikely to penetrate highly regulated industries such as healthcare, aviation, e-commerce, government, utilities, with their implementation mainly focusing on digital content, cross-border payments, Web3 native services, and machine economy (M2M/IoT/Agent) where regulatory pressures are lower or on-chain native scenarios. This is also the opportunity window for Web3-native smart commerce to achieve initial scalability breakthrough.

However, regulatory institutionalization is rapidly advancing in 2025: the U.S. Stablecoin Act has gained bipartisan support, Hong Kong and Singapore have implemented stablecoin licensing frameworks, the EU's MiCA has officially come into effect, Stripe supports USDC, and PayPal has introduced PYUSD. The clarification of the regulatory structure means that stablecoins are being embraced by the mainstream financial system, opening up policy space for future cross-border settlements, B2B procurement, and machine economy.

Best Application Scenario Matching for Smart Commerce

The core of Smart Commerce (Agentic Commerce) is not to replace one payment rail with another but to entrust the "order-authorize-pay" process to an AI Agent, allowing the traditional fiat payment system (AP2, authorization credential, identity compliance) and the stablecoin system (x402, CCTP, smart contract settlement) to each play to their strengths. It is neither a zero-sum competition between fiat and stablecoins nor a single-track replacement narrative but a structural opportunity to simultaneously expand the capabilities of both: fiat payments continue to support human commerce, while stablecoin payments accelerate machine-native and on-chain native scenarios. The two complement each other, becoming the dual engines of the smart economy.

Comprehensive Overview of the Underlying Protocol Standards for Smart Commerce

The protocol stack of Smart Commerce (Agentic Commerce) consists of six layers, forming a complete machine business chain from "capability discovery" to "payment delivery." A2A Catalog and MCP Registry are responsible for capability discovery, ERC-8004 provides on-chain verifiable identity and reputation; ACP and AP2 respectively handle structured order and authorization instructions; the payment layer consists of the traditional fiat rail (AP2) and the stablecoin rail (x402) running in parallel; there is currently no unified standard for the delivery layer.

· Discovery Layer: Addresses "How does an agent discover and understand callable services?" The AI side builds a standardized capability catalog through A2A Catalog and MCP Registry; Web3 relies on ERC-8004 to provide an addressable identity reference. This layer is the entry point of the entire protocol stack.

· Trust Layer: Answers "Is the counterpart trustworthy?" The AI side lacks a universal standard, while Web3 builds a unified framework for verifiable identity, reputation, and execution records through ERC-8004, which is a key advantage of Web3.

· Ordering Layer: Responsible for "How are orders expressed and validated?" ACP (OpenAI × Stripe) provides structured descriptions of products, prices, and settlement terms to ensure merchant fulfillability. As it is difficult to express real-world business contracts on-chain, this layer is mainly dominated by Web2.

· Authorization Layer: Deals with "Has the agent obtained legitimate user authorization?" AP2 binds intent, confirmation, and payment authorization to a real identity system through verifiable credentials. Web3 signatures do not yet have legal effectiveness and therefore cannot assume the layer's contract and compliance responsibilities.

· Payment Layer: Determines "Through what channel is the payment completed?" AP2 covers traditional payment networks like cards and banks; x402 provides a native API payment interface for stablecoins, allowing assets like USDC to be embedded in automated calls. These two channels complement each other in functionality here.

· Fulfillment Layer: Addresses "How is content securely delivered after payment completion?" There is currently no unified protocol: the real world relies on merchant systems to complete deliveries, and Web3's encrypted access control has not formed a cross-ecosystem standard. This layer remains the biggest blank space in the protocol stack and is also the most likely to nurture the next generation of foundational protocols.

Exhaustive Breakdown of Agentic Commerce Key Core Protocols

Around the Agentic Commerce, focusing on service discovery, trust assessment, structured ordering, payment authorization, and final settlement, institutions such as Google, Anthropic, OpenAI, Stripe, Ethereum, Coinbase, etc., have proposed underlying protocols in the corresponding areas to jointly build the next generation Agentic Commerce core protocol stack.

Agent-to-Agent (A2A) – Intelligent Agent Interoperability Protocol (Google)

A2A is an open-source protocol initiated by Google and donated to the Linux Foundation. It aims to provide a unified communication and collaboration standard for AI Agents built by different vendors using different frameworks. A2A is based on HTTP + JSON-RPC, enabling secure, structured message and task exchange, allowing Agents to engage in natural language dialogue, collaborative decision-making, task decomposition, and state management. Its core objective is to build an "Internet of Agents," where any A2A-compatible Agent can be automatically discovered, invoked, and composed to form a cross-platform, cross-organizational distributed Agent network.

Model Context Protocol (MCP) – Unified Tool Data Access Protocol (Anthropic)

MCP, introduced by Anthropic, is an open protocol that connects LLM/Agents with external systems, focusing on standardizing tool and data access interfaces. It abstracts databases, file systems, remote APIs, and proprietary tools into standardized resources, enabling Agents to access external capabilities securely, controllably, and auditably. MCP is designed to emphasize low integration costs and high scalability: developers only need to integrate once to allow Agents to leverage the entire tool ecosystem. Currently, MCP has been adopted by several leading AI vendors, becoming the de facto standard for agent-tool interaction.

MCP focuses on "How Agents Use Tools"—providing models with unified and secure access to external resources (such as databases, APIs, file systems, etc.), thereby standardizing the interaction between agents and tools/data.

A2A addresses "How Agents Collaborate with Other Agents"—establishing a native communication standard for intelligent agents across vendors and frameworks, supporting multi-turn dialogue, task decomposition, state management, and long-lifecycle execution. It serves as the foundational interoperability layer between agents.

Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) – Ordering and Checkout Protocol (OpenAI × Stripe)

ACP (Agentic Commerce Protocol) is an open order standard proposed by OpenAI and Stripe (Apache 2.0), establishing a structured ordering process that can be directly understood by machines for the Buyer-AI Agent-Merchant triad. The protocol covers product information, price and terms validation, settlement logic, and payment credential delivery, enabling AI to securely initiate purchases on behalf of users without becoming a merchant.

Its core design is for AI to invoke the merchant's checkout interface in a standardized manner, while the merchant retains full business and legal control. Through structured orders (JSON Schema / OpenAPI), secure payment tokens (Stripe Shared Payment Token), compatibility with existing e-commerce backends, and support for REST and MCP publishing capabilities, merchants can enter the AI shopping ecosystem without the need to rework their systems. Currently, ACP has been used in ChatGPT Instant Checkout, becoming an early deployed usable payment infrastructure.

Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) - Digital Authorization and Payment Instruction Protocol (Google)

AP2 is an open standard launched by Google in collaboration with multiple payment networks and tech companies, aiming to establish a unified, compliant, and auditable process for AI Agent-led payments. It binds the user's payment intent, authorization scope, and compliant identity together through an encrypted, signed digital authorization credential, providing verifiable evidence of "who is spending for whom" to merchants, payment institutions, and regulators.

AP2 follows the design principle of "Payment-Agnostic," supporting credit cards, bank transfers, real-time payments, and access to stablecoins via extensions like x402 and other encrypted payment channels. Within the entire Agentic Commerce protocol stack, AP2 is not responsible for specific products and ordering details but provides a universal Agent payment authorization framework for various payment channels.

ERC-8004 - On-chain Agent Identity / Reputation / Attestation Standard (Ethereum)

ERC-8004 is an Ethereum standard proposed by MetaMask, the Ethereum Foundation, Google, and Coinbase, aiming to build a cross-platform, verifiable, and trust-minimized identity and reputation system for AI Agents. The protocol consists of three on-chain parts:

· Identity Registry: For each Agent, mint an on-chain identity similar to an NFT, which can be linked to MCP/A2A endpoints, ENS/DID, wallets, and other cross-platform information.

· Reputation Registry: Standardize recording of ratings, feedback, and behavioral signals, enabling an Agent's historical performance to be auditable, aggregatable, and composable.

· Validation Registry: Support validation mechanisms such as stake re-execution, zkML, TEE, providing verifiable execution records for high-value tasks.

Through ERC-8004, an Agent's identity, reputation, and behavior are attested on-chain, forming a cross-platform discoverable, tamper-proof, and verifiable trust base, which is a vital infrastructure for Web3 to build an open and trusted AI economy. ERC-8004 is currently in the review stage, indicating that the standard is mostly stable, feasible, but still widely soliciting community feedback and has not been finalized.

x402 – Stablecoin Native API Payment Channel (Coinbase)

x402 is an open payment standard proposed by Coinbase (Apache-2.0), transforming the long-idle HTTP 402 Payment Required into a programmable on-chain payment handshake, enabling APIs and AI Agents to achieve accountless, frictionless, pay-as-you-go on-chain settlements without an account, credit card, or API Key.

Figure: HTTP 402 Payment Workflow  Source: Jay Yu@Pantera Capital

Core Mechanism: The x402 protocol resurrects the early Internet legacy of the HTTP 402 status code. Its workflow is as follows:

· Request and Negotiation: The client (Agent) initiates a request -> the server responds with a 402 status code and payment parameters (such as amount, receiving address).

· Self-Settling Payment: The Agent signs the transaction locally and broadcasts it (usually using a stablecoin such as USDC) without requiring manual intervention.

· Verification and Delivery: The server or a third-party "Facilitator" validates on-chain transactions and instantly releases the resources.

x402 introduces the Facilitator role as middleware connecting Web2 APIs to the Web3 settlement layer. The Facilitator manages complex on-chain validation and settlement logic, allowing traditional developers to monetize their APIs with minimal code. The server no longer needs to run a node, manage signatures, or broadcast transactions; it only needs to rely on the Facilitator's interface for on-chain payment processing. The most mature Facilitator implementation currently provided by the Coinbase Developer Platform.

x402's technical advantages include: supporting on-chain microtransactions as low as 1 cent, overcoming the limitations of traditional payment gateways unable to handle high-frequency low-value calls in AI scenarios; completely removing the need for accounts, KYC, and API keys, allowing AI to autonomously complete M2M payment loops; and implementing Gasless USDC authorization payments through EIP-3009, natively compatible with Base and Solana, providing multi-chain scalability.

Based on the introduction of the core protocol stack for Agentic Commerce, the table below summarizes the protocol's positioning, core capabilities, main limitations, and maturity assessment at each level, providing a structured view for building a cross-platform, executable, and pay-ready smart agent economy.

Representative Projects in the Web3 Smart Agent Business Ecosystem

The current Web3 ecosystem of smart agent business (Agentic Commerce) can be divided into three layers:

· Business Payment System Layer (L3), including projects like Skyfire, Payman, Catena Labs, Nevermined, providing payment encapsulation, SDK integration, limit and permission governance, human approval and compliance access, and varying degrees of integration with traditional financial rails (banks, card networks, PSPs, KYC/KYB) to bridge payment business with machine economy.

· Layer 2 Native Payment Protocol (L2), consisting of protocols such as x402, Virtual ACP, and their ecosystem projects, is responsible for fee requests, payment validation, and on-chain settlement. It is the core enabling automation and end-to-end clearing in the current Agent economy. x402 is completely independent of banks, card networks, and payment service providers, providing on-chain native M2M/A2A payment capabilities.

· Infrastructure Layer (L1), including Ethereum, Base, Solana, and Kite AI, provides the on-chain execution environment, key infrastructure, MPC/AA, and permissioned Runtime technical stack for payments and identity systems as a trusted foundation.

Layer 3 Business Payment System Layer - Skyfire: Identity and Payment Credentials for AI Agents

Skyfire, with KYA + Pay at its core, abstracts "identity authentication + payment authorization" into a JWT credential usable by AI, providing verifiable automated access and charging capabilities for websites, APIs, and MCP services. The system automatically generates Buyer/Seller Agents and custodial wallets for users, supporting card, bank, and USDC recharge.

At the system level, Skyfire generates Buyer/Seller Agents and custodial wallets for each user, supporting balance recharge via cards, banks, and USDC. Its biggest advantage is full compatibility with Web2 (JWT/JWKS, WAF, API Gateway can be used directly), providing "identity-based automatic pay-per-view access" for content websites, data APIs, and utility SaaS.

Skyfire is a practical Agent Payment middleware layer, but identity and asset custody are centralized solutions.

Layer 3 Business Payment System Layer -  Payman: AI-Native Fund Authorization Risk Control

Payman provides Wallet, Payee, Policy, and Approval capabilities, building a governanceable and auditable "fund authorization layer" for AI. AI can execute real payments, but all fund actions must comply with user-set limits, policies, and approval rules. The core interaction is done through the natural language interface payman.ask(), where the system is responsible for parsing intent, validating policies, and executing payments.

The key value of Payman is: "AI can move money, but never overstep its authority." Migrating enterprise fund governance to an AI environment: tasks such as automated payroll, expense reimbursement, vendor payments, batch transfers, etc., can all be completed within well-defined permission boundaries. Payman is suitable for financial automation within enterprises and teams (payroll, expense reimbursement, vendor payments, etc.), positioning itself as a Controlled Fund Governance Layer, and not attempting to build an open Agent-to-Agent payment protocol.

L3 Business Payment System Layer - Catena Labs: Agent Identity/Payment Standards

With AI-Native financial institutions (custody, clearing, risk control, KYA) as the business layer and ACK (Agent Commerce Kit) as the standard layer, Catena is building a unified identity protocol for Agents (ACK-ID) and an Agent-native payment protocol (ACK-Pay). The goal is to fill the missing standards for verifiable identity, authorization chains, and automated payments in the machine economy.

ACK-ID is based on DID/VC to establish an Agent's ownership chain and authorization chain; ACK-Pay defines payment requests decoupled from the underlying settlement network (USDC, banks, Arc) in a verifiable receipt format. Catena emphasizes long-term cross-ecosystem interoperability, with its role more akin to the "TLS/EMV layer of the Agent economy," characterized by strong standardization and a clear vision.

L3 Business Payment System Layer - Nevermined: Metering, Billing, and Micro Payment Settlement

Nevermined focuses on an AI usage-based economic model, providing Access Control, Metering, Credits System, and Usage Logs for automated metering, pay-per-use billing, revenue sharing, and auditing. Users can recharge credits via Stripe or USDC, and the system automatically verifies usage, deducts fees, and generates auditable logs with each API call.

Its core value lies in supporting real-time micro payments at sub-cent levels and Agent-to-Agent automated settlement, enabling activities such as data purchase, API calls, and workflow scheduling to operate on a "pay-as-you-go" basis. Nevermined does not build new payment rails but constructs a metering/billing layer on top of payments: driving AI SaaS commercialization in the short term, supporting an A2A marketplace in the medium term, and potentially becoming the micro payment fabric of the machine economy in the long term.

Skyfire, Payman, Catena Labs, and Nevermined belong to the Business Payments Layer and all require integration with banks, card networks, PSPs, and KYC/KYB to varying degrees. However, their true value does not lie in "fiat onramp," but in addressing machine-native needs that traditional finance cannot cover — identity mapping, permissioned governance, programmatic risk control, and pay-per-use billing.

· Skyfire (Payment Gateway): Provides "Identity + Auto Debit" for websites/APIs (on-chain identity mapping to Web2 identity).

· Payman (Financial Governance): Focuses on internal enterprise policies, limits, permissions, and approvals (AI can spend money but not exceed authority).

· Catena Labs (Financial Infrastructure): Integrates with the banking system to build services through KYA, custody, and settlement (AI compliance bank).

· Nevermined (Cashier): Focuses only on metering and billing above payments; payments rely on Stripe/USDC.

In contrast, x402 operates at a lower level as the solely bankless, card network-less, and PSP-less native on-chain payment protocol, enabling direct on-chain debiting and settlement through the 402 workflow. When upper-layer systems such as Skyfire, Payman, and Nevermined can all call x402 as the settlement rail, it provides Agents with a true M2M / A2A automated native payment loop.

L2 Native Payment Protocol Layer - x402 Ecosystem: From Client to On-Chain Settlement

The x402 native payment ecosystem can be divided into four levels: the Client, the Server, the Payment Execution Layer (Facilitators), and the Blockchain Settlement Layer. The Client is responsible for initiating payment requests by Agents or applications; the Server provides data, reasoning, or storage API services to Agents on a pay-per-use basis; the Payment Execution Layer completes on-chain debiting, validation, and settlement, serving as the core execution engine of the entire process; and the Blockchain Settlement Layer undertakes the final token debiting and on-chain confirmation, achieving immutable payment finality.

Example: X402 Payment Flow   Source: X402 Whitepaper

Client-Side Integrations Layer (The Payers)

Enabling an Agent or application to initiate an x402 payment request is the "starting point" of the entire payment flow. Representative projects:

· thirdweb Client SDK — The most commonly used x402 client standard in the ecosystem, actively maintained, supports multiple chains, and is the default tool for developers to integrate x402.

· Nuwa AI — Allows AI to directly access x402 services with payment without coding, representing the "Agent Payment Gateway" project.

· The official website also lists Axios/Fetch, Mogami Java SDK, Tweazy, and other early-stage clients.

Currently, existing clients are still in the "SDK era," essentially developer tools. Advanced forms of clients such as browser/OS clients, bot/IoT clients, enterprise systems, or clients capable of managing multiple wallets/facilitators have not yet emerged.

Server-Side / API Provider (Services / Endpoints / The Sellers)

Selling data, storage, or inference services to Agent on a per-request basis, some representative projects include:

· AIsa — Provides API calls and settlement infrastructure for paid resources to real AI Agents running, allowing them to access data, content, computing power, and third-party services on a per-call, per-token, or usage basis. Currently the top x402 call volume.

· Firecrawl — The most commonly consumed web page parsing and structured web crawler entry for AI Agents.

· Pinata — Mainstream Web3 storage infrastructure, x402 can now cover the real underlying storage costs, not just lightweight API.

· Gloria AI — Provides high-frequency real-time news and structured market signals, serving as an intelligence source for trading and analysis-oriented Agents.

· AEON - Extending x402 + USDC to offline merchant acquiring in Southeast Asia / Latin America / Africa.

· Neynar - Farcaster's social graph infrastructure, opening up social data to Agents in an x402 way.

The current server is focused on web crawling/storage/news API, with the more advanced key layers such as financial transaction execution API, advertising API, Web2 SaaS gateway, and even real-world task execution API almost untouched, representing the most potential growth curve in the future.

Payment Execution Layer (Facilitators / The Processors)

Responsible for on-chain deductions, validation, and settlement, it is the core execution engine of x402, representing projects:

· Coinbase Facilitator (CDP) - An enterprise-grade trusted executor, Base Mainnet zero fees + built-in OFAC/KYT, making it the strongest choice for production environments.

· PayAI Facilitator - The execution layer project with the widest multi-chain coverage and fastest growth (Solana, Polygon, Base, Avalanche, etc.), being the most widely used multi-chain Facilitator in the ecosystem.

· Daydreams - A strong use-case project that combines payment execution with LLM reasoning routing, the fastest-growing "AI reasoning payment executor," and is becoming the third major force in the x402 ecosystem.

· According to x402scan's data in the last 30 days, there is still a batch of mid-to-long-tail Facilitators/Routers, including Dexter, Virtuals Protocol, OpenX402, CodeNut, Heurist, Thirdweb, x402.rs, Mogami, Questflow, etc., with overall transaction volume, seller count, buyer count all significantly lower than the top three.

Blockchain Settlement Layer

x402 Payment Workflow's final destination, responsible for completing the actual token deduction and on-chain confirmation. Although the x402 protocol itself is Chain-Agnostic, settlement is currently mainly concentrated on two networks:

· Base ——Promoted by the CDP official Facilitator, USDC-native, fee-stable, it is currently the settlement network with the highest transaction volume and number of sellers.

· Solana——Primarily supported by multi-chain Facilitators like PayAI, it has the fastest growth in high-throughput and low-latency, especially in high-frequency reasoning and real-time API scenarios.

The chain itself is not involved in the payment logic. With the expansion of more Facilitators, x402's settlement layer will show a stronger trend towards multi-chain.

In the x402 payment system, Facilitators are the only roles that truly execute on-chain payments, closest to "Protocol-Level Revenue": responsible for validating payment authorization, submitting and tracking on-chain transactions, generating auditable settlement proofs, while handling replay, timeout, multi-chain compatibility, and basic compliance checks. Unlike Client SDKs (Payers) and API servers (Sellers) that only handle HTTP requests, Facilitators serve as the ultimate clearinghouse for all M2M/A2A transactions, controlling traffic entry points and settlement fee rights, thus at the core of value capture in the Agent economy, receiving the most market attention.

However, the reality is that most projects are still in the testnet or small-scale demo stage, essentially serving as lightweight "payment executors," lacking moats in key capabilities such as identity, billing, risk control, and multi-chain steady-state processing, showing obvious low barriers to entry and high homogenization features. As the ecosystem matures, Facilitators will demonstrate a winner-takes-all pattern: leading institutions (such as Coinbase) with stability and compliance advantages have a significant lead. In the long run, x402 remains an interface layer that cannot carry core value. What truly possesses sustainable competitiveness is a comprehensive platform that can build an identity, billing, risk control, and compliance system on top of settlement capabilities.

L2 Native Payment Protocol Layer - Virtual Agent Commerce Protocol

The Virtual Agent Commerce Protocol (ACP) provides a set of universal business interaction standards for autonomous AI, enabling independent intelligent agents to request services, negotiate terms, complete transactions, and undergo quality evaluation in a secure, verifiable manner through the Request → Negotiation → Transaction → Evaluation four-stage process. ACP uses blockchain as a trusted execution layer, ensuring that the interaction process is auditable and tamper-proof, and introduces Evaluator Agents to establish an incentive-driven reputation system, allowing heterogeneous and independent professional agents to form an "autonomous business entity" under decentralized coordination to engage in sustainable economic activities. Currently, ACP is still in its early stages, with a limited ecosystem scale, more resembling an exploration of "multi-agent business interaction standards."

L1 Infrastructure Layer - Kite AI: Emerging/Vertical Agent Native Payment Chain

Mainstream general-purpose blockchains such as Ethereum, Base (EVM), and Solana provide the most fundamental execution environment, account system, state machine, security, and settlement foundation for Agents, with a mature account model, stablecoin ecosystem, and a wide developer base.

Kite AI is a representative example of "Agent Native L1" infrastructure, specifically designed to provide the underlying execution environment for intelligent entities to handle payments, identity, and permissions. Its core is based on the SPACE framework (stablecoin-native, programmable constraints, agent-first authentication, compliance audit, economically feasible micropayments), and achieves fine-grained risk isolation through a three-tier key system of Root→Agent→Session; further, by optimizing state channels to build an "Agent Native Payment Railway," costs are reduced to $0.000001 and latency is controlled at the hundred-millisecond level, enabling feasible API-level high-frequency micropayments. As a general execution layer, Kite is upward compatible with x402, Google A2A, Anthropic MCP, and downward compatible with OAuth 2.1, aiming to become a unified Agent payment and identity base that connects Web2 and Web3.

AIsaNet integrates the x402 and L402 (Lightning Labs' 402 payment protocol standard based on the Lightning Network) protocols as a micropayment and settlement layer for AI Agents, supporting high-frequency transactions, cross-protocol call coordination, settlement path selection, and transaction routing, allowing Agents to automatically make payments across services and chains without understanding the underlying complexity.

Summary and Outlook: From Payment Protocol to Machine Economic Order Restructuring

Agentic Commerce is the establishment of a new economic order led by machines. It is not as simple as "AI auto-ordering," but rather a complete reconstruction of the cross-subject chain: how services are discovered, trust is established, orders are expressed, permissions are authorized, value is settled, and disputes are handled. The emergence of A2A, MCP, ACP, AP2, ERC-8004, and x402 standardized the "business closed-loop between machines."

Along this evolutionary path, the future payment infrastructure will differentiate into two parallel tracks: one based on traditional fiat logic for business governance and the other based on the x402 protocol for native settlement. The value capture logic between these two is fundamentally different.

Business Governance Track: Web3 Business Payment System Layer

· Use Case: Low-frequency, non-micropayment real-world transactions (such as procurement, SaaS subscriptions, physical e-commerce).

· Core Logic: Traditional fiat will continue to dominate long-term, with Agents serving as smarter front-ends and process coordinators rather than replacing services like Stripe/card networks/bank transfers. The main barriers to stablecoin large-scale adoption in the real business world lie in regulation and taxation.

· Projects like Skyfire, Payman, Catena Labs derive their value not from the underlying payment routing (usually handled by Stripe/Circle) but from "Governance-as-a-Service." They address machine-native needs that traditional finance cannot cover—identity mapping, permission governance, programmatic risk control, liability attribution, and M2M/A2A micropayment (settling by token/second). The key is to become the enterprise's trusted "AI financial steward."

Native Settlement Track: x402 Protocol Ecosystem and the Facilitator's Endgame

Use Case: High-frequency, micropayment, M2M/A2A digital-native transactions (API billing, resource streaming payments).

Core Logic: x402 (L402) functions as an open standard and achieves atomic binding of payment and resources through the HTTP 402 status code. In the realm of programmable micropayments and M2M/A2A scenarios, x402 is currently the most complete and advanced protocol in the ecosystem (HTTP-native + on-chain settlement), with the potential to be the "Stripe for agents" in the Agent Economy.

Mere integration of x402 on the Client or Service side does not bring a premium in the race; the true growth potential lies in upper-layer assets that can sustain long-term repeat purchases and high-frequency calls, such as OS-level Agent clients, robot/IoT wallets, and high-value API services (market data, GPU inference, real-world task execution, etc.).

The Facilitator assists in completing the payment handshake, invoice generation, and fund settlement between Client and Server, acting as a protocol gateway. They control both traffic and settlement fees and are currently the closest link to "revenue" in the x402 Stack. Most Facilitators are essentially "payment executors" with noticeable low barriers to entry and homogenized features. Dominant players with advantages in usability and compliance (such as Coinbase) are shaping the landscape. Key value to avoid marginalization will shift to the "Facilitator + X" service layer: by constructing a verifiable service catalog and reputation system, they can offer arbitration, risk control, treasury management, and other high-margin capabilities.

We believe that in the future, there will be a dual-track system of "Legal Tender System" and "Stablecoin System": the former will support mainstream human commerce, while the latter will carry high-frequency, cross-border, and micropayment scenarios for machine-native and on-chain-native purposes. The role of Web3 is not to replace traditional payment systems but to provide the underlying capabilities of verifiable identity, programmable settlement, and global stablecoins for the Agent Era. In the end, Agentic Commerce will not be limited to payment optimization but will be a restructuring of the machine economic order. When billions of microtransactions are automatically completed by agents in the background, the protocols and companies that first provide trust, coordination, and optimization capabilities will become the core force of the next-generation global business infrastructure.

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