monthly_brief
Machine payments leave the whitepaper phase
By September 2025 x402 had been public for four months, MCP for ten, and Visa Intelligent Commerce for five. Google AP2 and Stripe/OpenAI ACP arrived in the same month. The public record still showed announcements and SDKs more than independent payer proof.
Why it matters
Watch whether discovery indexes start publishing repeat-payer fields rather than listing counts.
Source: zFinia retrospective synthesis