# Vercel — Introducing x402-mcp: Open protocol payments for MCP tools

- Company: Vercel (vercel.com)
- Announced: 2025-09-12T13:00:00+00:00
- Category: developer-tool-release
- Coverage: not counted
- Announcement: yes
- Group: announcements
- Source: https://vercel.com/blog/introducing-x402-mcp-open-protocol-payments-for-mcp-tools
- Record: https://forck.live/items/20823-introducing-x402-mcp-open-protocol-payments-for-mcp-tools
- Subject: v0 / AI SDK / AI Gateway

Vercel introduced x402-mcp, an open protocol that integrates payments into HTTP requests using the 402 Payment Required status code, enabling programmatic payments for MCP servers and the Vercel AI SDK without prior account setup. The protocol is payment-network agnostic and currently settles as exact, one-time payments in USDC on the Base blockchain. Vercel also released an x402 AI Starter template demonstrating the protocol with Next.js, AI SDK, AI Elements, and AI Gateway.

## Evidence

Verbatim from https://vercel.com/blog/introducing-x402-mcp-open-protocol-payments-for-mcp-tools:

> x402 is an open protocol that addresses this by adding payment directly into HTTP requests. It uses the 402 Payment Required status code to let any API endpoint request payment without prior account setup.

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