Block has joined the x402 Foundation to help advance open, agentic commerce, Steve Reis, head of product, Block Financial Platform, said in a Thursday (Sept. 24) blog post.

As a member of this open standard for agentic payments, Block will bring its experience across payments and consumer products to the Foundation’s working groups, continue contributing to Bitcoin Lightning support of x402 and continue building open agentic commerce tools, Reis said.

Joining the x402 Foundation is the next step in Block’s contributions open agentic commerce, which include contributing its open-source AI agent goose, helping launch the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF) and joining the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP).

The x402 Foundation “puts a neutral, community-governed payment standard underneath that work,” Reis said in the post.

“We believe the agentic economy should be built on open rails: standards that any developer can implement, that no single company controls and that create room for new use cases while lowering costs for everyone who participates,” Reis said.

For Block and its customers, the collaboration with the x402 Foundation will mean that sellers can reach new buyers and their agents through open, standard rails; that agents can transact seamlessly to pay on a customer’s behalf and to pay for the agentic services they use; and that bitcoin can secure a role as everyday money by enabling the high-volume, low-value payments the agentic economy will generate, Reis said.

Erik Reppel , creator of x402 and Technical Steering Committee member of the x402 Foundation, said in the post: “Block bringing Bitcoin Lightning to the protocol is exactly the kind of contribution that makes an open standard stronger.

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