Monetization Gateway beta: charge AI agents for consumption with HTTP 402

Cloudflare has launched its Monetization Gateway in closed beta, enabling eligible U.S.-based domain owners to charge AI agents per use for websites, APIs, MCP tools, and datasets through HTTP 402 Payment Required responses and x402-based payments settled in USDC on the Base blockchain. Designed for agent consumption patterns that favor low-cost, fast, automated transactions over subscriptions and prepaid credits, the service lets sellers configure access rules and fixed, variable, or origin-controlled pricing while Cloudflare manages payment verification, settlement, retries, analytics, and protocol updates via Coinbase’s x402 Facilitator. Initial production use cases include Cloudflare AI Gateway, where agents can pay per inference request; Ceramic.ai, which sells individual agent-oriented web searches; Stocktwits, which provides on-demand market sentiment and activity signals; and API2PDF, which charges agents for PDF-generation requests based on actual compute and bandwidth use. Cloudflare plans to add agent discovery, transaction logs, further payment rails, and identity capabilities as it expands access to additional geographies.

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