Facilitator (x402)
A service that verifies and settles x402 payments on behalf of a resource server, so the server does not have to run chain infrastructure itself.
In the x402 flow the resource server has to answer two questions before serving anything: is this payment valid, and has it settled. Doing that directly means running a node, watching a chain and handling reorganisations — a lot of machinery for an API that just wants to charge a tenth of a cent.
A facilitator takes that on. The server forwards the payment payload, the facilitator verifies it against the scheme and reports whether it settles, and the server decides whether to serve the resource. The server keeps the pricing decision and never touches chain infrastructure.
The trade-off is a dependency: the facilitator sits in the path of every paid request, so its availability becomes the server's availability, and it sees the traffic. Which facilitator to trust, and whether to run your own, is one of the real operational decisions in adopting x402.
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