Stripe just turned HTTP 402 into a cash register for AI Agents 🤖💳; Grab bought a US FinTech for $0.63 on the dollar, and both sides are celebrating 🤷‍♂️📈

FinTech is Eating the World, 17 February

Hey Everyone,

Good morning & happy Tuesday! Today, all eyes are on FinTech giant Stripe, which just turned HTTP 402 into a cash register for AI Agents (what it’s all about & why it’s huge + bonus dives into Stripe & the future of payments for the machine economy), and Grab that acquired a US WealthTech Stash for pennies on the dollar, making both sides happy (unpacking the latest fintech M&A, what it tells us & what to expect next). So let’s jump straight into the finnovative stuff 🌶️

Stripe just turned HTTP 402 into a cash register for AI Agents 🤖💳

Following the money 💸 $140 billion FinTech giant Stripe quietly dropped the new machine payments preview. And the most revealing thing about it isn’t the crypto. It’s the status code.

HTTP 402 - ”Payment Required” - has been sitting dormant in the web’s architecture since 1997, reserved for a future where the internet would need native payment rails. Stripe, integrating the x402 protocol developed by Coinbase COIN 0.00%↑ , just activated it.

The system lets AI agents pay for API calls, compute, and data using USDC on Base, settling in seconds for as little as $0.01 per request. No account, no API key, no human in the loop 🤖

An agent hits an endpoint, gets a 402 response with a crypto deposit address, pays from its wallet, and retries. Done ✅

Let’s take a quick look at this to understand why it could be huge and what’s next.