Jack Dorsey’s Block joins x402 with Lightning support

Block has joined the x402 Foundation and contributed Bitcoin Lightning support to the open payment protocol used by AI agents, web services and applications.

Block’s September 24 announcement states that the company has brought Lightning payments into x402 as part of its work on agentic commerce. The payment company said Lightning fits transactions that require low costs, fast settlement and repeated small payments.

The technical addition was already visible in x402’s public development repository. A September 23 commit records “exact Lightning on lnbtc,” providing an independent public record of the Lightning specification entering the project immediately before Block disclosed its participation.

Block brings Bitcoin Lightning into x402 payments

Created by Coinbase, x402 uses the HTTP 402 “Payment Required” response to let software request and settle payments during an ordinary web interaction. A server can return payment instructions when an AI agent requests a paid API, dataset or other digital service. The agent pays and retries the request with proof of payment.

Block’s contribution introduces Bitcoin Lightning as another payment option inside that framework. The company said Lightning was designed for “instant, low-cost, high-volume payments,” though Block did not publish transaction volumes, merchant deployments or AI-agent usage figures specifically tied to its Lightning implementation.

Steve Lee, head of Block’s Bitcoin development initiative Spiral, made a forward-looking case for the technology. He said agents “will make billions of small payments,” adding that such activity would need payment rails designed for frequent, inexpensive transactions. The statement represents Block’s expectation for agentic commerce, not measured current Lightning demand.

The x402 protocol itself already carries substantial activity from existing payment methods. Its official site currently reports 75.41 million transactions, $24.24 million in volume, 94,060 buyers and 22,000 sellers during the previous 30 days. The figures cover x402 as a whole and should not be interpreted as Bitcoin Lightning statistics.

x402 moves beyond its stablecoin-heavy payment base

Stablecoins have supplied much of x402’s payment activity to date. As crypto.news reported in its coverage of stablecoin use across agent-payment activity, Circle said $USDC accounted for 99.3% of x402 payment volume measured during its second quarter. Circle’s figure applied specifically to x402 activity in its data, not every AI-agent payment system.

Lightning gives developers an option that settles in Bitcoin instead of a dollar-linked token. Block described its contribution as an effort to expand the available non-card payment methods supported by an open standard. Erik Reppel, x402’s creator and a member of its Technical Steering Committee, said the protocol was designed so different networks could be added without tying the standard to one payment rail.

Recent integrations show how developers have been adding network choices to x402. Crypto.news reported this week that AI-agent payment support through x402 reached Cardano’s software stack, with an initial TypeScript release and a facilitator tested on the network’s pre-production environment. Mainnet use had not yet been demonstrated in that implementation.

Other deployments are further into production. In related coverage, crypto.news reported that autonomous payment infrastructure on Casper mainnet uses an x402 facilitator to let AI agents purchase online services through HTTP-based payments.

The $XRP Ledger has generated another source of activity. As crypto.news reported, agentic payment activity on $XRP Ledger passed one million x402 transactions by July, while Ripple-backed t54.ai introduced tools and directories for AI projects using the network.

Block joins a Linux Foundation-governed payment standard

Coinbase originally developed x402 before contributing it to the Linux Foundation. The Linux Foundation announced the x402 Foundation in April as a neutral body intended to oversee development of the payment standard outside the control of one vendor.

The Foundation became operational in July with 40 organizations. Its official announcement listed Amazon Web Services, Google, Coinbase, Mastercard, Visa, Stripe, Circle, Ripple, Shopify and Solana Foundation among its premier members, with other blockchain and infrastructure companies participating at different membership levels.

Microsoft requires a more precise description. The Linux Foundation’s April launch notice listed Microsoft among organizations expressing “initial intent and support” for the Foundation, but Microsoft was not included in the named 40-member operational roster published in July. The current x402 membership page does not expose member names as searchable text, so the available official material does not support describing Microsoft as a confirmed current member without qualification.

Under the Foundation model, x402 remains network and currency agnostic. The protocol puts payment instructions inside normal HTTP requests, allowing different settlement systems to plug into a common interaction between a client and server. Its official documentation says merchants can accept several networks or schemes through the same payment middleware.

Block ties x402 to its existing agentic commerce work

The x402 membership extends work Block has already pursued around autonomous software. Block said it has contributed goose, its open-source AI agent, helped establish the Agentic AI Foundation and participated in the Universal Commerce Protocol initiative.

Google describes Universal Commerce Protocol, or UCP, as an open-source standard connecting consumer-facing AI systems with merchant infrastructure. Its framework covers processes such as product discovery and checkout while allowing businesses to expose payment choices to software agents.

x402 serves a different layer. Its focus is the payment request and settlement interaction over HTTP, including cases where an autonomous application purchases a single API call or other digital resource without using a conventional checkout flow. Block said open payment rails could let sellers interact with buyers’ agents without creating a separate integration for every agent platform.

AWS has already connected x402 to commercial AI infrastructure. As crypto.news previously reported, Amazon Bedrock AgentCore’s autonomous payment integration added Coinbase x402 infrastructure for $USDC transactions, allowing compatible agents to pay for services while operating inside enterprise spending and compliance controls.

The Graph has implemented the standard at the service level as well. Crypto.news reported that pay-per-request access to blockchain data lets developers and AI agents purchase individual Graph Gateway queries using x402 instead of maintaining a conventional subscription or prepaid API account.

Block has not announced a timetable for integrating Lightning-based x402 payments directly into Square, Cash App, Bitkey or its other consumer products. Its September 24 roadmap says the company will keep contributing to Lightning support, participate in x402 Foundation working groups and continue developing agentic-commerce tools that use the standard.