OpenAI and AWS release guide on x402 payment flow via Base

OpenAI just published a technical cookbook that walks developers through wiring up AI agents to make their own payments. The guide, titled “Controlled Agentic Commerce with AgentCore Payments,” pairs OpenAI’s Agents SDK with Amazon’s Bedrock AgentCore Payments service and a protocol called x402, which settles transactions in USDC on Base. The practical upshot: AI agents can now autonomously pay for external resources, like data feeds or API calls, without a human clicking “approve” on every transaction. Instead, the application sets spending rules, and the agent operates within them. How x402 actually works The x402 protocol borrows its name from HTTP status code 402, “Payment Required.” That status code has existed since the early days of the web but was never widely adopted. It was essentially a placeholder for future use. Decades later, it finally has a job. The flow works like this: an AI agent makes an HTTP request to an external service. Instead of getting the usual 200 OK response, it receives a 402 Payment Required response. That response includes payment terms, specifically the amount owed and the asset required, which in this case is USDC on Base. The agent then checks wh...