The rivals

x402 on Base faces competition from another chain, from a rival protocol backed by Stripe, and from the card networks. This lesson looks at each with dated numbers, and at what it changes for someone building or selling on Base today.

On 25 August 2026 a Solana news site reported that Solana had passed Base on daily x402 transactions for the first time in six months. Four weeks later it reported Solana carrying 76% of all x402 transactions. If you were building on Base, should you have moved?

The answer depends on which number you look at, and that’s true of every rival in this lesson.

Solana

The headline numbers come from Artemis data, cited by the official Solana account and reported by Solana Compass: 23.2 million x402 transactions on Solana in the four weeks to 22 September 2026, 76% of the total.

x402scan tells a more mixed story. In the 30 days to 11 October 2026, Base still had 81% of x402 transactions and 66% of the dollars there. Over 184 days, Solana led on 19. The same data shows Solana ahead on 26 of 28 days in January and February 2026, so “the first time in six months” doesn’t hold on x402scan.

Solana

Much of the August swing traces to one customer. BlockRun’s daily Base transactions fell from 1.2 million on 17 August to 2,911 a week later, as its Solana traffic jumped from a few hundred a day to 470,729 on 19 August. The researchers read this as one heavy payer changing chain, probably for cost; BlockRun hasn’t said. Its GitHub page now tells users to prefer Solana for wallet payments.

Solana

On dollars, the last wash-filtered split comes from Visa and Artemis, with data to 21 April 2026. It had Base carrying the bulk of adjusted activity, about 93% of volume in the research’s reading. By 11 October 2026 nobody had published a newer filtered split.

What it means if you build on Base: a lead built on a few routing decisions can reverse, so don’t read a flip in counts as a flip in demand. You also don’t have to choose. An x402 server can list the same price on Base and on Solana in its accepts list, and Coinbase’s facilitator settles on both.

Stripe’s MPP

The Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) was built by Stripe and Tempo and went live in mid-March 2026. It also uses the 402 status code. Cloudflare’s docs call it backwards-compatible with x402, and MPP’s own site says one endpoint can serve both kinds of client.

Stripe’s MPP

Its measured use is small. Visa counted about $25,000 over about 115,000 MPP transactions in its first few weeks. The threat is distribution. Stripe’s docs say machine payments on Stripe work best with MPP (14 Oct) source, and they list the networks plainly:

Stripe’s MPP

A Stripe merchant who wants stablecoin payments and doesn’t care about protocols gets steered to MPP, away from Base. MPP also has sessions built in for many small charges, while x402’s equivalent, batch-settlement, is newer, and Coinbase’s facilitator runs it on EVM chains only (14 Oct) source. AWS’s AgentCore Payments added MPP alongside x402 when it reached general availability on 18 August 2026.

Stripe’s MPP

What it means if you build on Base: if you sell through Stripe, expect to be nudged toward MPP. If you run your own server, you can answer both protocols from one endpoint and let the buyer’s software choose.

The card networks

Visa and Mastercard are Premier members of the x402 Foundation, and neither has a first-party x402 product.

Mastercard launched Agent Pay for Machines on 10 June 2026 with more than 30 partners, including Coinbase, Cloudflare, Stripe and Tempo. In March 2026 it agreed to buy BVNK, a stablecoin payments company, for up to $1.8 billion.

The card networks

Visa runs its own agent identity work and contributes to MPP. Its data team, with Artemis, published the most-cited filtered figure for x402: about $15.0 million of adjusted volume across 109.6 million transactions from May 2025 to 21 April 2026. Visa’s own conclusion is that cards fit consumer-sized purchases, stablecoins fit machine micropayments, and many tasks will use both.

The card networks

What it means if you build on Base: an agent buying a $40 item for its owner will probably use a card credential, and Stripe’s card minimum of $0.50 (14 Oct) source shows where cards stop making sense. Below that, for $0.002 API calls, stablecoin rails like x402 have the field mostly to themselves.

The squeeze on facilitators

Coinbase charges nothing for the first 1,000 settlements each month and $0.001 for each one after that (14 Oct) source. The x402 docs list free alternatives such as Dexter and Mogami, thirdweb takes 0.3% (14 Oct) source, and Binance’s B402 copies Coinbase’s spec and pays the gas, though it is still testnet-only, with mainnet by request (14 Oct) source.

The squeeze on facilitators

A seller pricing calls at $0.001 or less can’t cover a $0.001 fee on every call. The researchers see this as the reason 2026’s protocol work went into upto and batch settlement, and the reason Circle’s Nanopayments, which settles many payments together with a $0.000001 (14 Oct) source minimum, matters. Some gateways are drifting away from paying per call on-chain: BlockRun now sells card-funded API keys beside wallet payments.

Where this leaves Base

The researchers expect a layer where a server lists several payment methods behind a 402 and the client picks one. On that view, lasting value sits in discovery, in identity and spend controls, and in billing, more than in any one chain. Base-only facilitators and wallets are the most exposed.