When Machines Pay Machines: The Economics of Agentic AI (opens in new tab)

The internet was built with a missing piece. In 1994, when the HTTP specification reserved status code 402 for “Payment Required,” the architects knew money would eventually flow as freely as data. Three decades later, that vision is finally materializing—not because humans demanded it, but because AI agents need it. The 402 Awakening 🔗HTTP 402 sat dormant for years, a placeholder for a future nobody could quite figure out. Credit cards required human intervention.