Actually, x402 was created because using a credit card programmatically is very difficult.
The whole business of Stripe is based on that: it's so hard for developers to do, and so many regulations, that they would rather pay an another company to do so.
Crypto can be sent just using a contract.transfer() call
Their example of an /api/premium is quite nice! You could you like keep existing pages free, but provide specific output content for llm!
So if: cost monetized API < cost configuring scraper for your website OR feature provided by premium api > data got by scraping, then some people/business will likely pay
Having an almost a plug and play solution who does CDN + DDoS Protection + WAF/Rate Limiter + Bot Protection, for a few bucks, is very useful for startups and SMEs.
And compared to cloud different offerings, their quick setup and lower cost is hard to beat.
It's good point! However, one of the main benefits of a technology like this, would be not really for everyday people, but for people with handicap or a speech impediment.
I personally have a stammer. While mine is less severe, and I doesn't need directly it, I know several people that would quite be glad of the benefits that it could bring to them. (Example: pass online interviews).
I agree however of the privacy concerns. We could limit it in a first time to medical devices for example, or have some privacy laws in place.
Probably some business will popup, like: "rent part of your unused subscription", or even: "proxy tokens with a premium", eg. 5.5 USD on Opus 4.7 paid by the distiller to the user, that will then only spend 5 USD.
So true! It was the same for Gitlab, Cisco, Oracle... every-time they used the AI excuse to explain their laid-off, instead of explaining why they have bad financials. Actually, in all the cases above, the real reason when digging in the financials was the leadership and bad work culture...
Indeed, they are hitting a weird spot, their pricing category is stuck in between people who just want to play without breaking the bank account, who will go for a PS5 or XBox, and hardcore gamers who will go directly for their own custom build PC
I feel like the author wrote like the full plan/ substance himself, and gave to an AI the formatting. It's quite fine for me so actually, as long as the substance make sense/is logical.
One thing I have a question: what about business that doesn't have hospitaly/B2C? Many exemples relies on the F&B business, which is quite special in the fact that one of the core value proposition is directly hospitality, so we could argue that "adding more hospitality" is actually their core business already.
But what about a company which is more in B2B, and where procurement will be more rationalized (e.g RFP, which is often regulated)?
One thing as well: this is moat from an organization point of view, but unfortunately not for the individual: soft skills are often easier to get than hard skills, and there is so already a competition on the job market for the client-facing roles, even before AI arrival: like Sales / Business Developers / Account Managers (or more internal roles to try to build something that the client would need, like Product Managers)
The exemples section at the end, with csv and sql are quite powerful. It open the door to easy caching of raw data and probably other use cases, quite interesting!