Agent payments rail becomes an official standard: BRC-166 for AIs

Homepage > News > Tech > Agent payments rail becomes an official standard: BRC-166 for AIs TL;DR: BRC-166, a formal standard from developer Andy Rowe approved in late August, lets AI agents and scripts pay for web services in satoshis—no account, no signup, and no special wallet software required. The standard is designed to coexist with BSV Association’s own HTTP 402 payments work rather than compete with it, and its reference implementation is already live on the BSV mainnet. Any BSV holder can pay per-use fees online, and anyone can verify those payments on the public blockchain. Key takeaways: BRC-166 is an official BSV standard for paying per web request in satoshis over HTTP 402, approved and merged into the BSV BRCs repository on August 28, 2026. Payers need only a BSV key and basic signing tools—no BRC-100 wallet, identity keys, or ecosystem software required. Every payment goes to a unique one-time address, so anyone can verify settlement on the public blockchain without trusting the service. The design complements rather than competes with BSV Association’s x402 proposal (#2890); both modes can coexist on the same network. A working implementation has been live o...