Cardano has officially integrated the x402 payment standard, positioning the blockchain alongside Solana and XRP Ledger in the market for automated internet payments. The Cardano Foundation announced the integration on September 21, making it available through npm for developers.
The x402 standard uses HTTP's existing "402 Payment Required" status code to initiate payments. Through the integration, applications and AI agents can send and receive ADA or Cardano native tokens over HTTP without requiring account creation, API keys, or checkout pages.
Cardano's specification was merged into the x402 framework in June. The foundation's engineers subsequently developed the client, server, and facilitator components, collaborating with the Masumi Network team to add Masumi as a transfer method. The work underwent a three-month review process.
Developers can install the package using npm install @x402/cardano. The demo and facilitator are open source, with TypeScript as the first supported language and Python support planned for the future.
The x402 payment standard has recorded 75.41 million transactions worth $24.24 million over the previous 30 days, involving 94,060 buyers and 22,000 sellers, according to the x402 website. Ripple previously joined the Linux Foundation-hosted x402 Foundation in July, with XRP Ledger already supporting the standard alongside companies including Coinbase and Circle.
ADA was trading at approximately $0.24 at the time of reporting, reflecting a gain of nearly 6% over 24 hours and over 20% in the prior seven days.
