AI Agency's Financial Arrangement Strategy Supported by Coinbase and Ethereum Foundation
Google has taken a significant step forward in the development of its AI agent ecosystem with the launch of the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2). Announced on September 16, 2025, AP2 aims to enable AI agents to complete financial transactions with users, merchants, and payments providers seamlessly.
The Ethereum Foundation's AI team has shown support for the idea of agents paying each other, finding it resonating with the broader AI community. Davide Crapis, head of the Ethereum Foundation's AI team, stated that the crypto-specific x402 extension opens up a new avenue for agents built on crypto rails.
AP2 is designed to support credit and debit card transactions, stablecoins, and real-time bank transfers. It provides a common language for secure, compliant transactions between agents and merchants, making financial interactions more efficient and reliable.
Google's new protocol, AP2, can be used as an extension of the MCP (Merchant Customer Exchange). The Ethereum Foundation, which is currently finalizing ERC-8004, a standard for agents to discover, verify, and transact with each other on the network, also supports AP2, as it aligns with its own efforts to make Ethereum the foundation of the AI agent economy.
The Ethereum Foundation contributed to the development of the x402 extension and believes it will complement its own efforts. Erik Reppel, head of engineering at Coinbase Developer Platform, expressed excitement about the potential of x402 to power stablecoin payments in AP2.
AP2 is backed by a consortium of industry leaders, including Coinbase, PayPal, American Express, Etsy, Mysten Labs, MetaMask, Eigen Labs, and Google. ERC-8004, the standard for agents to discover, verify, and transact with each other on the Ethereum network, is also backed by members of Google's Agent2Agent team.
Google has also launched a crypto-specific extension for its Agent2Agent protocol, named x402, to facilitate the adoption of digital assets in its AI agent framework. The goal of AP2 is to enable AI agents to seamlessly complete financial transactions, paving the way for a more integrated and efficient AI agent economy.
Crapis mentioned that the x402 extension aligns with his team's goal of creating better infrastructure for agentic interaction on Ethereum. As the AI agent ecosystem continues to grow, AP2 and x402 are set to play crucial roles in facilitating secure, compliant, and efficient financial transactions.
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