> Markdown version of [/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1264-http-402-teaching](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1264-http-402-teaching). Every page supports `.md` or `Accept: text/markdown`. Links point to the HTML versions so they work for humans too. Agent guide: [/agents.md](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/agents.md).

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# HTTP 402: Teaching the Web to Let Agents Pay


- **Date:** Friday, Jul 10, 2026
- **Time:** 11:00–11:30 (30 min)
- **Room:** Stage 5
- **Event:** World Congress 2026 Europe

## Recording

[Watch recording](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/100232-http-402-teaching-the-web-to-let-agents-pay)

## Description

For thirty years, one HTTP status code has sat unused in the spec: 402, "Payment Required." As AI agents become real economic actors that browse, decide, and transact on our behalf, that gap suddenly matters. Agents can't hold a credit card, pass a captcha, or click through a checkout, so the payment rails we built for humans break down. This talk looks at x402, an open and chain-agnostic standard that finally activates HTTP 402 for machine-native payments, and walks through how it actually works: the request, 402, pay, and retry loop, the facilitator pattern, and what it takes to charge an agent a fraction of a cent for an API call, data, or similar.

From there, we get to the hard part: what a settlement layer for autonomous agents must guarantee, including predictable sub-cent fees, fast deterministic finality, neutral open infrastructure, and a tamper-evident record of every payment. We'll make that concrete on Hedera, using its fixed low fees and fast finality for the payments themselves, its native token service for stablecoin transfers, and its consensus service as a verifiable audit log of agent activity. You'll leave with a clear architecture for agentic commerce and an open standard you can start designing against today.

## Speaker

### [Ed Marquez](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/@ed-marquez)

Head of Developer Relations at Hashgraph


## Related talks at this congress

- [Build Agents That Can Pay with x402: From Your Laptop to a Live Network](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1289-build-agents-that) — Ed Marquez, Hendrik Ebbers, Peter Swierzy
- [Building the Agentic Economy with x402 and Stablecoins](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1290-building-the-agentic) — Jorrin Bruns, Sara Jane Kenny
- [200 OK: Payment settled, resource delivered](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1039-200-ok-payment) — Brian Whippo
- [Building the Agentic Economy with x402 and Stablecoins](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/999-building-the-agentic) — Gabriel Kuettel, Sara Jane Kenny