What is x402?

HTTP has had a status code for payment since the 1990s, 402 Payment Required, and almost nothing used it. x402 gives it a body: the server answers 402 with what it costs and where to pay, the client pays, and the request goes through. No account, no stored card, no API key to rotate.

It matters for software that buys on its own. An AI agent calling a search API, a data feed or a model a few hundred times a day cannot fill in a signup form for each one; with x402 it pays per call, often a fraction of a cent in USDC. The standard takes no fee of its own: what a payment costs is the network's fee.

It is chain neutral: the site lists EVM chains and Solana, with stablecoins as the main use, and says it can be extended to traditional payment methods.

How this shows up in Orla

In Orla an agent pays an API per request with x402, in USDC on Base, Ethereum or Polygon, from its own wallet and inside its cap per call and per day. Every call leaves a receipt: which agent, whose budget, how much and to whom. Orla's fee is 0.25% of what the agent moves, at most $25 a payment.

A company can sell over x402 too: an endpoint that charges per call, with the income booked in the same books as everything else.

Sources, read on 8 October 2026

• x402.org, the standard's own site: “If a request arrives without payment, the server responds with HTTP 402, prompting the client to pay and retry.”