Kakao Pay forms 'AI payments alliance' with Google and Visa…joins the x402 Foundation

Kakao Pay will participate as a founding member in establishing the foundation for the artificial intelligence (AI) agent payment standard, the 'x402' protocol.

On the 2nd (local time), Kakao Pay said it has joined the 'x402 Foundation,' launched under the Linux Foundation, as a founding member alongside Google, Microsoft (MS), Visa, Mastercard, Coinbase and others. x402 is a universal payments standard designed so that AI agents and applications can execute payments automatically—much like exchanging data—without human intervention.

A Kakao Pay official said, "We decided to participate because we sympathize with the purpose of standardizing digital-asset transaction protocols to respond to next-generation payment methods such as agentic payments."

The core of x402 is simplifying the payment process. It is structured to make online value transfer as simple as email by reducing existing complex authentication and authorization procedures. As a neutral protocol that is not tied to any specific company, it is designed to support both fiat-currency and crypto-asset payments.

Global payments and infrastructure companies such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Stripe and Cloudflare are also participating in the foundation. Kakao Pay's move is seen as a strategy to expand its presence in the next-generation payments ecosystem by taking part in the process of setting global standards.

Industry observers are focusing on the possibility that x402 could become core infrastructure for automated commerce environments, as it is an open standard that can enable automated payments at a global scale without building separate financial infrastructure.

The x402 Foundation plans to build an ecosystem open to a wide range of participants—including developers, startups and global companies—and to promote the spread of payment standards across platforms and regions.