AWS Brings Stablecoin Payments to AI Crawlers

Publishers have been trapped between blocking AI crawlers outright and letting them access content for free. AWS WAF just flipped the switch by building payment collection directly into its firewall—using HTTP 402, a status code from 1996 that had no real use until now. By standardizing on x402, an open protocol for machine-to-machine payments, AWS removes the engineering complexity of monetizing bot traffic and potentially establishes the web's default layer for AI commerce.