Block plugs Bitcoin Lightning into x402, because AI agents also need sats for snacks ⚡

Block has joined the x402 Foundation and added Bitcoin Lightning support to the open payment protocol, the company said Thursday, expanding its push into payments for autonomous AI agents. The company said Lightning's low-cost, high-throughput design is suited to the machine-to-machine transactions that agentic commerce is expected to generate. "Bringing Lightning to x402 is a concrete step toward making Bitcoin everyday money for people and the agents acting on their behalf, and we're excited to help the industry build on it," said Steve Lee, head of Block's Bitcoin development initiative Spiral.

x402 is an open payment standard that lets AI agents and web services programmatically pay for API access, data and other digital services without human input. By integrating Lightning, Block is positioning the Bitcoin network as a settlement rail for that emerging agent-driven economy, alongside stablecoin and traditional card-based options.

The move also makes Block the latest major technology company to join the x402 Foundation, which launched in April under the Linux Foundation. Google, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Coinbase and the Solana Foundation are among the existing backers of the standard, which has been pitched as a way to standardize how software agents pay for goods and services online.

Block said the integration builds on its participation in the Universal Commerce Protocol, an initiative aimed at enabling AI-driven commerce flows for small businesses. The company framed Thursday's announcement as part of a broader strategy to embed $BTC into everyday payment use cases, including those executed by software on a user's behalf.

Industry participants have been racing to establish common standards for agentic payments as large language models and autonomous tools increasingly handle transactions. A separate effort, announced this week, will see Visa working with the parent company of South Korean exchange Upbit on stablecoin payments and AI-driven commerce, underscoring the competitive push into the same market.