What if your marketing agent could pay for its own resources?

Not through your credit card on file. Not through pre-negotiated API contracts. But autonomously—paying for exactly what it needs, when it needs it, at the moment of use.

This isn’t science fiction. Two protocols emerging in 2025 make this possible: A2A (Agent-to-Agent) for discovery and communication, and x402 for payments. Together, they could fundamentally reshape how AI marketing services work.

We’re not announcing a roadmap. We’re thinking out loud. And we’d love for you to think with us.

The Protocols in Brief

A2A: How Agents Find Each Other

Google’s Agent-to-Agent protocol (now under the Linux Foundation) creates a standard way for AI agents to discover and communicate with each other.

Every agent publishes an “Agent Card”—a JSON file at /.well-known/agent.json describing its capabilities. Other agents can discover these cards, understand what the agent can do, and initiate collaboration.

Think of it like DNS for AI agents. Before you can talk to someone, you need to find them.

x402: How Agents Pay Each Other

Coinbase’s x402 protocol revives the HTTP 402 “Payment Required” status code—reserved in the original HTTP spec but never implemented.

When a server needs payment, it responds with HTTP 402 plus payment details: amount, currency, wallet address. The client signs a payment, retries the request with payment proof in the header, and receives the resource.

No accounts. No API keys. No invoices. Just pay-and-use.

Important note: x402 is currency-agnostic. It can settle on-chain (USDC on Solana, Base, etc.) or off-chain through traditional payment rails. The protocol doesn’t mandate crypto—it mandates a standard for requesting and proving payment.

A Thought Experiment: The Autonomous Marketing Agent

Imagine this architecture:

MARKETING AGENT

Component	Description
Agent Card	”I do brand marketing”
Wallet	Balance: $500

Revenue Streams (Inbound):

Other agents discover me via A2A
Businesses pay via x402 for marketing services

Cost Structure (Outbound):

LLM reasoning: $0.003/call
Image generation: $0.02/img
Web research: $0.001/scrape
Social APIs: $0.005/post

Value Add = Orchestration + Strategy + Brand Intelligence

The marketing agent:

Receives requests from clients (human or agent) discovered via A2A
Collects payment via x402 for services rendered
Pays for resources it consumes—LLMs, image generators, research tools—via x402
Keeps the margin between revenue and costs

All automatic. All transparent. All auditable.

The Cost-Plus Model on Autopilot

Here’s where it gets interesting for pricing:

Example: Social Media Campaign

Item	Amount
Customer pays	$10.00

Agent’s Costs:

Resource	Cost
LLM reasoning (strategy)	$0.45
LLM reasoning (content)	$0.30
Image generation (3 images)	$0.24
Web research (competitors)	$0.08
Social API posting	$0.03
Total cost	$1.10

Agent’s margin: $8.90 (value-add)

The “value-add” isn’t markup for markup’s sake. It’s payment for:

Orchestration: Knowing which tools to use, in what order
Strategy: Understanding what content will work for this brand
Brand intelligence: Accumulated knowledge from past interactions
Quality assurance: Ensuring outputs meet standards

This model has a radical transparency to it. The agent’s costs are potentially auditable on-chain. The customer knows exactly what goes into their deliverable.

Questions We’re Pondering

This is where our thinking gets fuzzy—and where we’d love input.

1. What’s the right pricing model?

Cost-plus transparent: “We charge cost + 40% margin, all visible”

Pro: Maximum trust, customers see exactly what they pay for
Con: Commoditizes the service, race to lowest margin

Value-based opaque: “We charge $X for outcome Y”

Pro: Captures value created, not just costs incurred
Con: Less differentiated from current SaaS models

Hybrid: Transparent costs + value-based service fee

Pro: Best of both worlds?
Con: Complexity

2. Who’s the customer—humans or agents?

If A2A takes off, your next customer might not be a human. It might be another agent that discovers your Agent Card and decides to use your services.

A procurement agent needs marketing for a product launch. It discovers your marketing agent via A2A. It pays via x402. It receives the deliverable. No human involved.

Is that the future? How do we design for it?

3. What about trust and accountability?

When agents transact autonomously:

Who’s liable if something goes wrong?
How do you dispute a transaction?
What’s the recourse for poor quality?

The protocols handle the mechanics. They don’t handle the trust layer.

4. Does this strengthen or weaken the moat?

Argument for stronger moat:

Accumulated brand intelligence becomes the differentiator
Orchestration quality matters more as raw capabilities commoditize
Network effects as more agents adopt and integrate

Argument for weaker moat:

If anyone can spin up an agent with the same tool access, what’s defensible?
Transparent costs make it harder to capture margin
Race to the bottom on agent fees

5. Currency and settlement questions

x402 is currency-agnostic, but practical questions remain:

On-chain (USDC, etc.): Fast settlement, global, but crypto friction for some customers
Off-chain (traditional rails): Familiar, but slower, higher fees, less auditable
Hybrid: Different options for different customers?

What do customers actually want here?

Why We’re Thinking About This Now

We’re not building x402 integration next week. This is horizon-scanning, not roadmap.

But the trends are converging:

A2A is gaining adoption (150+ organizations, Linux Foundation backing)
x402 is live (35M+ transactions on Solana)
Agent capabilities are accelerating
The question of “how do agents pay for things” needs an answer

If this future materializes, the companies that thought about it early will have an advantage. Those that didn’t will be retrofitting.

An Invitation to Discuss

We don’t have answers. We have hypotheses and questions.

If you’re thinking about:

Agentic commerce and autonomous AI systems
Payment protocols and settlement layers
The future of marketing services and automation
How AI changes the economics of service businesses

We’d love to hear from you. What are we missing? What are we wrong about? What’s the future you see?

This is an open conversation. The future is being built by those who show up to discuss it.

Have thoughts on agentic commerce and the future of AI marketing? Reach out or find us on Twitter. We’re genuinely curious what you think.