Ellie Dautner

A growing consortium of payment and technology firms is coordinating on an open protocol designed so artificial intelligence agents can initiate and complete transactions online. The x402 Foundation is a nonprofit initiative hosted under the Linux Foundation’s umbrella, with a scope that includes maintaining shared specifications and reference implementations, coordinating member participation, and providing a neutral venue for payments and infrastructure companies to collaborate.

Joseph J. Schuster, an attorney with Ballard Spahr, co-leads the firm’s fintech and payment solutions group and advises companies across financial services. He works out of Denver. Fintech and Consumer Opportunity: Tools That Work New approaches in finance underpin economic mobility. Financial technology, often shortened to fintech, refers to the use of software, data, and modern digital infrastructure to deliver or improve financial services.

An advocacy organization said United States shoppers are paying more because merchants fold the added expense of buy now, pay later transactions into prices, and it urged stricter oversight of the payment market. The group’s Monday analysis argued that as installment checkout options expand into additional retail categories, they influence broader consumer pricing.