Google took the last step on Tuesday to speed up the arrival of the AI Agent economy and announced the establishment of an open-source protocol for agent payments supported by some of the largest companies in Crypto.
The Agent Payments Protocol that has been unveiled today can be used as an expansion of the previously released agent2agent protocol from Google, which tried to create a standard for interactions between AI agents – automated assistants who are authorized to complete complex tasks on the internet on behalf of people or organizations.
Today’s announced protocol adds the crucial ingredient of payments to that mix, with the aim of enabling AI agents to seamlessly complete financial transactions with users, traders and payment providers seamlessly.
Agent agent Payments Protocol (AP2), an open, shared protocol that offers a common language for safe, conforming transactions between agents and traders.
AP2 can be used as an expansion of the A2A protocol and MCP. Learn how it works ↓ https://t.co/rbfzpu2qui
– Google Cloud Tech (@googlecloudtech) September 16, 2025
It is supported by both crypto support pillars such as Coinbase and the Ethereum Foundation, as well as traditional payment giants and suppliers, including PayPal, American Express and Etsy. Other crypto companies that support the initiative are sui -maker Mysten Labs, prominent crypto wallet Metamask and own labs, the company behind Ethereum repeated Protocol Eigenlayer.
(Disclaimer: Metamask is a product of Consensys, one of 22 Investors In an editorial independent Decrypt.)
Google said on Tuesday that the new protocol is an attempt to create a platform and currency agent “common language for safe, conforming transactions between agents and traders.” It supports credit and payment paste transactions, stablecoins and real-time bank transfers.
To accelerate the acceptance of other digital assets in the AI Agent Framework, Google has also launched a crypto-specific extension for its agent2agent protocol, called X402.
The Ethereum Foundation was one of the many crypto organizations that contributed to the X402 extension, of which it says it will supplement its own efforts to turn Ethereum into the foundation of the thriving AI agent economy. The Ethereum Foundation is currently ready ERC-8004A standard for agents to discover, verify each other and to handle each other on the network, which was supported by members of the Agent2Agent team of Google.
“ERC-8004 will support many forms of payments, but having the X402 extension helps the developers experience,” Davide Crapis, head of the newly announced Ethereum Foundation Ai -teamtold Decrypt. “After the ERC, X402 receives adoption, so this extension opens a new road for agents built on crypto rails.”
Crapis added that today’s announcement of Google is tailored to the goal of his team to create a better infrastructure for agent interaction on Ethereum.
“It is exciting to see the idea that agents are resonating each other with the wider AI community,” said Erik Reppel, head of engineering on Coinbase developer platform, on Tuesday in a statement. “Taking X402 to AP2 to start Stablecoin payments was logical -it is a natural playground for agents to handle each other and test crypto rails.”