When AI Agents Pay and Sellers Monetize: Building x402 Apps on AWS — Anil Nadiminti, AWS

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Hello all, welcome to uh the agent

e-commerce track and uh I'm Anil Lminti.

I'm a senior solutions architect here at

AWS. Uh I'm I'm here to talk to you

today about how AWS is innovating and uh

how you can build apps on uh AWS to

support the agent e-commerce. So uh

welcome to the session. Uh just to get

you started, let me set the stage with

something that you're very familiar

with. Uh imagine that you are your

organization is building uh a news

portal like this, right? So you're all

familiar with something where you're

accessing the news content and then

suddenly you hit a payw wall, right? So

this is where uh you pull out your

wallet or you try to uh figure out how

to make the payments, set up your uh

credentials, access keys in the sense

that you you make a credit card

transaction weekly, monthly or annual

subscription and then get started to

access the content. Right? So this is

all the content that is behind a payw

wall. But uh what we see now is that uh

much of the traffic that is actually

being uh sent to these uh uh portals now

on the internet is all coming from bots.

We see that we at a infliction point

where uh the bot traffic is more than

the human traffic right. So it's just uh

actually in fact surpassed that and uh

95% of that bot traffic is coming from

AI agents. So uh essentially we are also

looking at the rise of autonomous agents

right so where we all started using LLMs

asking questions asking for

summarization being able to uh get help

with using them as co-pilots getting

them to do agentic work to uh do

multi-step tasks and now we're in the

phase of autonomous agents where agents

are using the reasoning powers of large

language models to complete a task and

completing a task means that uh it it

has to go do whatever you're asking it

to do. And that's kind of where we are

in the uh journey. And we see that by

2027 about a billion agents will be

running uh performing tasks and 60% of

the enterprises will already be uh using

agentic workflows. So uh what happens

when agents hit these pay walls that uh

we just saw? When agents hit the pay

walls, they stall, they can't operate

and you see those messages that hey I

cannot access content. Uh right? So at

that point humans get in the loop. They

try to enter and put the credit card

details or API keys do the transactions

for the AI agents. But all of that is

manual friction, right? So essentially

bringing in a human in the loop. So

autonom autonomous agents actually break

[clears throat] at that point where the

uh friction is now building up. So uh

now sellers of the content have uh you

know couple of options right. So block

all the bot traffic but by blocking all

the traffic they lose this AI powered

discovery they miss this uh partnership

licensing options and AI also now

supports citations right so the

responses so they lose all of that uh

powered citations as well if they can't

sell the content essentially they lose

uh revenue generating options and if you

allow the bots to access those uh uh the

content what it means is that you know

hundreds of thousands of bots or

millions of bots could be hitting your

uh uh infrastructure which means that

the infrastructure costs will also raise

and uh you need to be able to support

all of that right so you also uh when

you allow bots to access content you

lose attribution the IP itself right so

because content is now freely available

so uh both these decisions are probably

not not a good option they're not ideal

so there should be another ideal option

where uh you would want to have your AI

agents being able to get and pay for the

content that they are looking for and

monetize on

So uh now we look at the next phase of

uh uh rise in autonomous agents where

agents should be able to transact and

make uh discover other agents resources

and essentially make payments. Right? So

this is the definition of agent

e-commerce where AI agents can

essentially discover uh you know it's a

form of e-commerce where autonomous

agents can uh discover independently and

make those uh uh settlements and then

access content. So let's look at uh the

agent e-commerce the two sides of agent

e-commerce the buy side and the sell

side. So uh when we talk about the buy

side the agents are making these

transactions and on the sell side the

sellers of the content are trying to

monetize on the content. So on the buy

side when you look at things AI agents

want to access these premium paywalled

content licensed content they want to be

able to hold wallets which they do not

have the option today and they want to

be able to make these microtransactions

you just heard in the prior talk as

well. But enterprises when they come to

this point they want more guardrails and

they do not want agents to go on

spending spree. Think about it right?

Would you allow your AI agents to get

handled on your wallets or credit cards

to be able to do that transactions and

where they could go rogue as well right?

So that's what the buyer side is looking

at. And on the seller side uh the there

are again billions of transactions that

be happening with these AI bots. So

sellers really want to be able to

understand what kinds of bots are

operating uh what kinds of transactions

they're making and uh really uh do this

at the edge. The sellers don't want to

change their entire infrastructure and

origins where the content is sitting.

They want to be able to do this at the

edge without changing much of this.

Right? So there is again uh one common

thing here on the buyer side and the

seller side which is a standardized

approach or a protocol to be able to

solve for this uh machine to machine

payments at the edge. So uh bottom line

buyers are saying that they want their

agents to be able to pay for content uh

and uh not have humans approving this

and then the sellers are saying that

they want to be able to earn from the AI

traffic. So bottom line the subscription

model is going to change with humans in

the loop to becoming humans on the loop

or out of the loop and that's kind of

what we are building towards. uh the the

traditional one-sizefits model does not

work anymore because of the fact that uh

again we look at that in the next slide

where uh the transactions cost will not

really work right all of this needs to

happening at realtime speed and the

paper use and paper execution is what

the f future is going to look like so if

you're a seller you would have come

across this right so there is a 25 cent

minimum transaction fees as well as 2.5%

on top of that and all of these

microtransactions are uh you know in the

in in like a cent subsend or you know

micro cents is what we are calling them.

So if you add like a 25 cents on top of

that it's essentially like 250 times to

what you know they are essentially

paying for. So the all of this model

does not work and uh while we are trying

to solve for that a very brief history

uh of this is every HTTP call

essentially responds back uh you know

there's a response for that you've seen

200 status codes 404 uh you know and the

301 these are all like status codes that

you're familiar with and then there is

one status code which is 402 which has

uh not been used it was reserved for

payment required and now finally uh

Coinbase has introduced this uh as uh

transactions over 402 which is also

called as X42 where they uh you know the

protocol talks about how you can do

machine to-achine transactions uh using

this protocol right so we'll take a

closer look at that but uh what happens

within the protocol is uh you know if

you look at this uh flowchart here a

client makes a request to the server and

then the server responds back with the

payment required uh the client then

figures out what is the payment method

that it wants to operate and then it

sends the payment authorization to the

server the server then utilizes a

facilitator to complete the verification

and then also utilizes the same

facilitator to complete the transaction

and once the settlement is completed

onchain essentially the server will then

respond back with the content right so

this is what's happening under the X42

protocol I thought I'll pick one of the

protocols and just uh explain this to

you but uh why this is compelling is uh

you know essentially there is no

protocol fees uh or the fees that a

consumer is paying for uh you know these

microcent transactions and the merchant

is paying very nominal gas fees is uh

again there is zero wait time this is

happening at the speed of internet and

uh there is no friction there is no API

keys to set up no subscriptions and the

payment is the essentially the uh

credential to be able to get the content

so there is no centralization it's uh

x42 can be extended as well and you can

implement it and there are no

restrictions as well so some key

milestones here are you know it was

introduced last year uh May 2025 it

explored is not part of the Linux

Foundation under open governance and

it's backed by Coinbase, AWS,

Google, Stripe, Anthropic, Cloudflare

and Circle right so many more folks in

there that are supporting that

organizations in there. So uh from

Amazon we have also released agent core

payments uh under the bedrock uh suite

so where uh agents will make be able to

make payments and we'll go into some of

the details here. So let's talk about

the buyer side here and what is involved

right? So we uh we understood from the

developers that they really want to be

able to get this uh agents to have

wallet support. They want to be able to

have real-time settlement uh have the

budget and guardrails which enterprises

really want and observability throughout

the stack where they would want to have

uh the full stack trace of everything

that's happening uh under the hood. So

I'm excited to share with you that we've

launched agent core payments and this is

a service that allows AI agents to

autonomously discover uh authorize and

execute payments with a few lines of

code. Uh now we've launched this in

partnership with Coinbase and Stripe

where you can bring wallets from

Coinbase and Stripe preview to be able

to do these operations and we'll go into

some of the details but uh the core

capabilities to start with are wallet

support where you can bring the the

wallets from Coinbase and Stripe. you're

able to orchestrate the payments using

payment connectors and uh today we

support X42 with many more protocols to

uh you know that are in the pipeline.

The service is designed to be protocol

agnostic. So as new protocols emerge, we

are going to be adding the support for

those protocols as well. And uh you know

the the settlement is going to be

instantaneous uh instant essentially and

uh the payment limits can be set uh

which is the most important thing that

we spoke about where enterprises are

looking to put some payment limits and

guards on how these transactions can

operate. So uh observability is builtin

and uh essentially all of this uh

operates with uh you know security as

the uh layer that is operating uh the

whole model right. So with that let's

look at uh some of these uh details on

how the payments limit can be set up

right. So you can create payment

sessions where you can set the

programmatically set the maximum amount

of uh uh value that can be used for

transactions or you can also set expiry

time in minutes. think where uh you are

able to set that uh I can the agent can

actually spend maybe $5 in 30 days or 60

days right so that's kind of the

operation uh model that you can set with

many more uh you know details that are

available I'm only going over a few

features but uh let's look at what

happens on the buyer side when the user

is asking an agent to make a particular

uh you know requesting for resources

right so agent completes the request by

accessing tools MPPP servers other

resources as well. So at that point of

time if the agent uh is uh looking at

you know it it finds that the there is a

response from one of the tool calls or

requests with a 402 agent core payments

is going to handle the request uh to

complete the transaction and then let

the AI agent know that uh essentially

the settlement happened and the AI uh

agent will be able to respond back with

the users. So in this process when the

wallets are uh wallet support is

imported the the the secret keys that

you use to import the wallets actually

are stored in a secure token wallet that

is uh secured by KMS where you know

that's there. So essentially the agent

does not have access to the private

keys. This is most important uh to note.

And uh next thing is that uh agent core

payments is also integrated uh through

uh a gateway which is also part of uh

which is another service that we have to

mp5 your internal APIs. Uh through agent

core gateway uh the agent core payments

can get access to discovery service uh

in coinbase where there are 10,000 plus

endpoints that are available to transact

and then u again there is a per session

budget that we just discussed as well.

So uh there is a decoupling of agent

infrastructure and uh the payment

infrastructure by design where the agent

can operate it it in its own loop and

whenever it sees the payment the payment

uh connectors orchestration payment

limits and integration with third party

wallets can happen right so it's

important to decouple them because again

skills can be poisoned inputs for the

agents can also be uh you know poisoned

by inputs as well right so where

malicious actors could uh try to do that

so By decoupling and making this uh by

design a agents can essentially have a

secure path for these transactions and

payments do not touch the you know

undeterministic path but this is more on

a deterministic uh uh layer as well. So

why this is important is that uh again

agents uh the code of the agents does

not have to change. You can bring your

own model frameworks and then the

payment itself uh can flow through uh in

the payment uh uh layer itself. So again

the controls the policies pending

controls can be outside of the payment

stack itself and again it's this is

built to be protocol agnostic. So this

is uh one of the console screens where

it shows how you can import uh the

payment connector uh and it shows that

you know you can select the the coinbase

wallet and the stripe preview wallet

from the console and uh this is a demo

in action where we are showing how a

secure resource can be accessed. Now in

this case uh the AI agent is essentially

making a you know discovering that there

is a secure source the agent core

payments is kicking in and then it's

completing the transaction by utilizing

the wallet that is already integrated

and uh the transaction completes. Now uh

this is on the buyer side. Now let's

look at the seller side to understand

what's happening. Right? So uh again

there is a lot of bot activity that's

happening. We have released uh under uh

the uh AWS web application firewall a

feature where we have bot detection in

place. Today we detect over 650

different types of bots. Think of bots

like perplexity bot, GPD bot, cloud bot,

you know, again Google bots, right? So

there are so many bots that are out

there. So we're able to detect also

understand the intent of these bots. So

why are these bots accessing the

content? Are they accessing the content

to train their models? are they doing it

because they have to respond back to an

intent where they're uh responding for a

rag search. So we're able to identify

the intent. We're also able to verify

the bots and identify them by a

signature. So we are able to say hey

this is a verified bot. So maybe you

have uh built a relation with one of

these organizations and these

verification will allow you to have a

different pricing for the organizations

that are already verified. So we'll look

at that in a second. So there's also

real-time traffic analysis that allows

uh more uh to be customized. And I'm

also happy to share with you today that

we announced VAF AI traffic

monetization. This is a service that

allows you to monetize uh based on the

content that uh you know based on how

you can measure, verify and monetize

based on the AI traffic that is hitting

your endpoints. Now if you might be

familiar with CloudFront which is our

content distribution network you can add

a web application firewall at that point

and essentially you can moni start

monetizing uh right away and based on a

few clicks uh you can do that again

using infrastructure as code as well.

Now I also spoke about a gateway service

that allows you to expose your AI

endpoints uh that are internal use and

mcpify them. So the same web application

firewalls can be used there. So your

internal APIs can be MCPI and then you

can start monetizing as well. So what

happens during monetization? The AI

agent AI bot essentially requests for

some content. The bot context uh

understands what kinds of bots is

detecting it. It's able to detect the

bot. It's able to categorize and

understand the intent of the bot as we

discussed earlier and verify uh and

check what kind of bot is available. So

then we are able to monetize uh using

the X42 and the publishers get paid as

well. So important to note is that again

there is no SDK change no changes at the

origin origin. Publishers keep 100% of

the revenue as well and uh again there

is no transaction fees or subscription

fees. So this supports X42 and we are

adding support for more uh protocols as

well. U a few dimensions on how you can

start monetizing. Think uh you have

separate paths. So a slash uh uh blog in

this case can be charging for a

different rate than a slash research or

maybe an API endpoint itself and uh you

you know the identity of these bots.

Again, if you make uh some kind of a

relationship with the uh bots uh

companies, organizations, maybe you make

a relation with Anthropic, then you can

essentially have a different pricing for

those bots versus different uh

unverified bots, right? So, uh think of

that option. And then you can also set

different pricing for intent as well. If

somebody's coming here, if a bot is

accessing the content for uh again

training, you can charge a different

rate than what it's doing for a search

as well. So again, these are different

VAF rules. they can be uh in a

combination of end or or then you can

access that. So this is how the

reimagine flow would look like uh where

you're allowing the AI agents or you

know essentially verified bots and

unverified bots to have different

pricing and humans to have different

pricing. Some cases you want to have

humans to access the content freely.

Some cases again the humans could be

charged where the bots could be charged

differently as well. Right? So this is

how uh you know you can reimagine the

price. So again there is some uh

dashboards that show the revenue numbers

and how uh you know you're uh able to

aggregate by different uh bots and

figure out what kind of revenue model

you want to operate and it also shows

what is the path uh that's being

accessed by these bots right so uh again

what is currently uh everyone using

agent e-commerce for they're using agent

commerce to uh run um again LLM

inference getting uh compute web

scraping uh they're uh creating research

search agents to be able to uh you know

serve the requests and uh agent to agent

as well. We see MCPs also being

monetized now. Uh again this is the last

12 months of uh traffic uh from um again

what we are seeing on uh Coinbase

agentic market u where you're seeing

that a $50 million volume transaction

happened over 170 million transactions.

The average settlement time is 200

milliseconds on base uh with about a

tenth of a cent as cost per transaction.

So I spoke to you about agent uh agent

core payments which is uh one of the you

know parts of the bigger ecosystem agent

uh bed agent core uh where you can

essentially bring your own model. You

can bring your own framework and uh you

can start building AI agents. You can

add context by adding memory. You can uh

bring again your own managed knowledge

bases. You can add web search

capabilities to the agents. you can

mcpify your internal APIs and then you

can uh have many more features like

being able to run evaluation on how your

agents are performing. So again you can

uh use runtime which is a bedrock uh

agent core runtime where you can bring

your own agentic uh uh application and

serve uh at scale and every request will

have uh its own isolated uh micro

virtual machine that is running to serve

the requests. So that's it from my side

here today. Uh thank you and uh hope you

have a nice day.

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