Thread by @jeff_weinstein

Autonomous agents are an entirely new category of users to build for, and, increasingly, to sell to.

Today, we’re launching (a preview) of machine payments on @stripe—a way for developers to directly charge agents, with a few lines of code. 🤖💸

$ Let’s start tinkering… ⤵️

You may be wondering: “Why can’t agents use virtual cards and transact as people do?”

Agents need:
- microtransactions
- 24/7 global rails
- controls (for human out of the loop)
- http native
- low latency
- finality guarantees

The current financial system is tuned for humans.

Now, businesses can accept machine payments via our regular ol' @stripe PaymentIntents API.

Charge agents for their API usage, MCP calls, or HTTP requests with agent-specific pricing plans, alongside your conventional subscriptions and invoices. Here's a demo from @stevekaliski:

The flow:

1/ Create a PaymentIntent
2/ Stripe generates a unique deposit address per transaction
3/ Return the address to an agent and instruct it to send funds or a payment token
4/ Track transaction status via API, webhook, or Dashboard
5/ Funds settle in your default balance

We’re launching with support for x402 using USDC stablecoins on @base, with more protocols, payment methods, currencies, and chains to come. Let us know which to prioritize.

And sales tax, refunds, and reporting just work. (You only need to think about crypto if you want to!)

We’re also releasing an open source cli called `purl` for you (and your bots) to test machine payments in the terminal, along with Node and Python samples. (Yes, “payments” + “curl” creatively smushed together.)

Read the docs and sign up for the preview: .docs.stripe.com/payments/machi…

Stripe is building economic infrastructure to help businesses thrive in the soon-future world where agents, humans, and business all transact. There’s billions of us but we expect trillions of agents (some now clawing on Mac minis).

The TAM of the internet is about to increase.