Cloudflare Lets Businesses Charge AI Agents in Stablecoins

Cloudflare has announced a tool that lets businesses charge AI agents in stablecoins. The company's Monetization Gateway initiative will allow an agent to automatically pay a small fee each time it accesses an online service, rather than requiring a human to sign up for a monthly subscription or enter a credit card number.

The move builds on Cloudflare's August rollout of cloudflare.pay, which lets AI agents prove they are acting on a user's behalf and spend from a linked wallet. According to Rohin Lohe, product manager at Cloudflare, the company will be ramping up features and users through the rest of the year, with plans to be widely available by early 2027.

The tool uses Coinbase's x402 system, a payment standard that lets websites charge software for access, to verify payments. USDC transactions are settled on Base, Coinbase's native blockchain network.