Catenaa, Thursday, May 15, 2025-BitGPT has launched 402Pay, a machine-native payment infrastructure based on the HTTP 402 status code, aimed at powering the next wave of autonomous AI commerce with frictionless micropayments.
The system allows AI agents to pay for resources such as compute power, data access, or APIs directly through HTTP requests, eliminating the need for human-led checkouts or traditional payment platforms.
The move addresses a key bottleneck in the growing AI agent market, which is projected to reach \$47.1 billion by 2030.
402Pay enables transactions as small as \$0.0005 per token or \$0.03 per image resize. Its architecture allows developers to wrap services in programmable pricing models and deploy them across BitGPT’s relay infrastructure, which handles on-chain settlement, authorization, and analytics.
The system includes a Creator Console for pricing, an SDK to integrate payments, and embedded wallets for agents to manage budgets. BitGPT charges just 0.25% fees, significantly lower than Stripe or PayPal, and supports full agent-to-agent payments — a feature missing from legacy platforms.
BitGPT’s innovation centers on HTTP 402, a rarely used “Payment Required” status code, reimagined to support scalable, autonomous payments at web speed. This allows AI agents to orchestrate complex workflows like translation or image generation without user intervention.
The launch is part of BitGPT’s broader roadmap toward a decentralized, privacy-preserving AI network. The team aims to onboard 100 providers by mid-2025 and activate 10,000 GPU nodes by 2026, driving toward a self-sustaining, intelligent agent economy.
