What happened?
Cloudflare announced NET Dollar, a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin and payment layer built to enable micropayments for autonomous AI agents and services. The company is working with Coinbase on the x402/Agent Payments Protocol to let machines make instant, programmatic purchases like flights, groceries, and API calls. The launch is timed with clearer stablecoin rules and growing industry support from players like Google and AWS, making machine-to-machine payments more practical.
Who does this affect?
AI developers, cloud providers, marketplaces, and anyone building or using personal or business AI agents will be directly affected because they can automate tiny, instant payments at internet scale. Content creators, API providers, and micro-merchants could get paid programmatically, while banks, card networks, and traditional payment processors face new competition. Regulators, stablecoin issuers, and big tech firms will also be pulled in as standards, custody, and compliance decisions shape adoption.
Why does this matter?
If machine-friendly stablecoins take off, they could unlock massive new volume in micropayments and help push the stablecoin market toward the multi-trillion-dollar projections analysts are forecasting by 2030. That would shift revenue models across cloud, e‑commerce, and API ecosystems toward pay-per-use and fractional payments, creating new monetization paths and operational demands. Depending on regulation and market structure, the trend could either reinforce dollar dominance and innovation or spark pushback from banks and policymakers worried about deposits and systemic risk.