X Pay Raises $1 Million to Expand Payment Infrastructure for AI Agents and APIs
Amsterdam, Netherlands, October 22nd, 2026
X Pay, a payment infrastructure provider for AI agents and APIs, has raised $1 million from nine investors to expand its platform, which enables automated payments through the x402 standard. The funding will support expansion to additional blockchain networks, an independent security review, the launch of an API marketplace, and compliance preparations in the European Union.
HTTP status code 402, or “Payment Required,” has been reserved for future use since the early days of the web. While codes such as 404 indicate a missing page and 403 indicate restricted access, 402 remained largely unused because traditional payment systems could not process very small transactions quickly and cost-effectively. Stablecoins have created new possibilities for such payments. In July 2026, the x402 standard, contributed by Coinbase, began operating under the Linux Foundation, with 40 member organisations, including Visa, Mastercard, Google, AWS, Cloudflare, Stripe and Circle.
The buyer changed before the rails did
The pressure is not coming from consumers. It is coming from software. An AI agent can find an API, read its documentation and decide it needs it, and then it stops, because paying means an account, an API key, a card on file and a human to set it all up. Accounts, KYC forms, one time passwords and 3D Secure all assume a person at the screen.
So the agent either gets handed a key with no spending limit on it, or it does not buy at all. Neither is a payment system.
What X Pay built
X Pay is the gateway that turns the x402 handshake into something a business can run. The server answers with a price, the client signs, the response is released in the same round trip and settles in USDC on Base. Around that sit the parts a merchant actually needs: quotes, verification, replay protection, receipts, payouts, a dashboard and a catalogue where a paid endpoint can be found.
There is a second half that matters more than it sounds. An x402 payment is a signed commitment with no chargeback behind it, so every control in the agent wallet runs before the signature exists, while refusing still costs nothing. A session key carries a ceiling for a single call, a rolling budget, a list of destinations it may pay and a threshold above which a human has to approve. Ask it to pay for something and it signs, asks a person, or refuses and names the limit that stopped it.
Why the money moved
X Pay went live on Base mainnet on 11 September 2026 and has since settled more than 50,000 payments, every one verifiable onchain. The company has now raised $1 million from DCI, Credit Scend, Skyland Ventures, Zerra Ventures, BigBull Capital, ERC20 Capital, EU Capital, Dubai Blockchain Lab and The Crypto Launchpad. Andy Cheung, who was Chief Operating Officer of OKX and now runs K25.ai, has joined as an advisor.
The business model is deliberately unexciting. A flat 1% of settled volume, no setup fee, no monthly minimum, nothing charged on a call that fails. Revenue grows with transactions rather than with token emissions, and the company holds no customer funds at any point.
“We did not invent x402. Coinbase contributed it and the Linux Foundation runs it,” said Johnny Sluijmer, Chief Executive Officer of X Pay. “What we built is the layer that turns a status code into a business somebody can operate. There are millions of APIs that have never been able to charge properly for what they do, because the smallest thing they can sell is worth less than the fee it would cost to sell it. We handed them the till.”
What comes next
The funding takes settlement to BNB Chain and then Solana, pays for an independent security review, opens the API marketplace and funds compliance work in the European Union, including preparation for MiCA. The company is marking its 50,000 transaction milestone with a community giveaway of $50 across ten winners.
About X Pay
X Pay is payment infrastructure for AI agents and APIs, built on the open x402 standard. It lets any HTTP endpoint name a price, accept a signed payment and serve its response inside a single request, with settlement in USDC on Base. X Pay is developed by X-Pay Technologies, registered in the Netherlands, KVK 42149086.
Website: https://x-pay.llc
X: https://x.com/x_pay_llc
Live onchain activity: https://www.x402scan.com/server/766676c5-56f8-4b05-ba3d-95a8ce6a3561
Contact
EDDY
X Pay
[email protected]
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