Facilitator Overview
Learn how the x402 facilitator works on XRPL to enable machine-to-machine payments.
What is x402?
x402 is an open payment protocol that brings stablecoin payments to plain HTTP. It revives the HTTP 402 Payment Required status so that servers can charge for APIs and digital content seamlessly.
Clients (human users or AI agents) can pay programmatically to access resources without accounts, API keys, or complex authentication.
Why x402?
Legacy payment rails weren't built for the web's speed or for machine-to-machine use. They are slow, costly, and require sign-ups and keys.
x402 embeds payment into the web's native request–response flow, enabling instant, global, usage-based payments with minimal integration—ideal for humans and autonomous agents alike.
Benefits
How it works (high level)
A buyer (client) requests a resource from a seller (server).
If payment is required, the seller responds with 402 and payment instructions.
The buyer constructs and sends a payment payload.
The seller verifies and settles the payment (often via a facilitator) and then returns the resource.
