x402 and agent payments

x402 is a way for a site to ask an agent to pay before it returns a resource, using the long-reserved HTTP 402 Payment Required status. It lets an automated client discover a price, pay, and continue, without a human stepping in to enter card details.

When an agent requests a paid resource, the server responds with 402 and a manifest that states what is being sold and how to pay. The agent reads the terms, completes the payment through a supported method, and retries the request. The transaction happens in the protocol, not in a checkout page built for human eyes.

This matters because agent commerce is held back by payment, not by capability. An agent can find a product and compare options, then stall at a checkout flow designed for a person with a browser. A declared payment surface such as x402, paired with structured pricing in the page data, lets the agent complete the purchase the same way it completed the search.

x402 belongs to a small family of agent payment standards, alongside agent payments discovery such as AP2. A site that publishes these signals tells agents that it is open for automated business, and in the case of the open peer pricelist model, it can be shown alongside other options at the moment an agent decides where to spend.

turva.dev publishes an x402 endpoint and manifest and participates in the x402-mesh peer pricelist. For an audit of a site's commerce surface for agents, contact info@turva.dev.