Ayo Akinyele, head of engineering at RippleX, said that AI agents have processed more than 13 million payments on the XRP Ledger, accounting for about one-quarter of all on-chain activity at present.
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According to the head of RippleX engineering, AI agents have executed more than 13 million x402 payments on the XRP Ledger.
Akinyele explained that so-called “agentic payments” make up about 25% of ledger activity, but the payment amounts themselves are still not large.
Former Ripple product lead Chandler Fang expects more brick-and-mortar businesses to accept payments in XRP and RLUSD from AI agents.
Agent payments surge on the XRP Ledger
In a post on X (formerly Twitter) late last week, Akinyele said the XRP Ledger had processed more than 13 million agent-based transactions and that 166 merchants were then accepting payments through the x402 protocol. He estimated that agents accounted for 25% of all transactions but did not specify how that figure was calculated or the period it covered.
A tracker operated by Ripple-backed startup t54 reported a total of 13,417,943 payments at the time, with a seven-day moving average of 216,145 per day. Later, t54’s XRPL AI Hub showed a cumulative 13,489,468 transactions and 168 merchants, while settlement volume stood at just 6,982 XRP and 12,010 Ripple USD (RLUSD). The cumulative transaction count has now surpassed 13.6 million.
The x402 protocol was originally designed by **Coinbase**, reviving the long-unused HTTP status code 402, “Payment Required,” to enable software agents to automatically pay for online services—such as data and computing resources—without human approval each time they use them. The x402 Foundation oversees the standard, and Ripple is a premier member of the foundation.
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Chandler Fang: “The era of widespread on-chain payments at brick-and-mortar businesses is coming”
**Chandler Fang**, a former Ripple product lead who went on to co-found t54, noted that agent payments on the XRP Ledger had jumped from around 1 million in July to more than 13 million this month. He predicted that the “next phase” would see more brick-and-mortar stores and services come on-chain, with AI agents paying in XRP or RLUSD and settling through t54’s x402 facilitator. However, he did not name any specific new partners or targets.
In his post, Akinyele told developers that “agents are already paying for APIs, data, and compute,” pointing to the XRP Ledger’s low fees and fast settlement, as well as the expanding AI tools ecosystem. “100 million payments could come sooner than we think,” he added.
“100 million could come sooner than expected”: Akinyele’s outlook
Many of the payments recorded so far are small transactions, and the total settlement amount remains negligible. Neither Ripple nor t54 has set an official target for when agent payments will reach 100 million. XRPL AI Hub data also does not distinguish between commercial activity by independent businesses, recurring automated requests, and traffic from experimental applications.
As recently as mid-July, the XRP Ledger had recorded about 1.4 million agent payments, with cumulative fees generated by them totaling just $280, according to reports. The ledger first hit 1 million agent payments on July 8. In an interview later that month, Akinyele said, “We’ll pass 100,000 in no time,” adding that “we could reach 100 million within the next one to two years.” His latest remarks suggest that milestone could arrive sooner than expected.
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