Cloudflare unveils NET Dollar stablecoin secure transactions for the agentic web

Cloud connectivity provider Cloudflare Inc. today announced plans to introduce NET Dollar, a new U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin that will enable instant, secure transactions for the agentic web.

Cloudflare is aiming to make NET Dollar a core feature of a new business model for the internet that rewards originality, sustains creativity and enables innovation in an artificial intelligence-driven world.

The stablecoin is seeking to address how the web is evolving from humans driving every interaction themselves to delegating tasks to autonomous AI agents to book a flight, order groceries, manage calendars and more. Cloudflare argues that for this to happen, the underlying financial system will also need to evolve, as the AI-driven internet will need money that is instant, global and secure so that AI agents, developers and creators can transact instantly, automatically and reliably.

“For decades, the business model of the internet ran on ad platforms and bank transfers. The internet’s next business model will be powered by pay-per-use, fractional payments and microtransactions — tools that shift incentives toward original, creative content that actually adds value,” explained Matthew Prince, co-founder and chief executive officer of Cloudflare. “By using our global network, we are going to help modernize the financial rails needed to move money at the speed of the internet, helping to create a more open and valuable internet for everyone.”

Cloudflare has been around for years helping customers accelerate performance, secure websites and networks, and develop and deploy applications. With NET Dollar, the company is aiming to do similarly with transactions by offering an internet-native payment system that is fast, secure and globally accessible.

NET Dollar is aimed at helping modernize the payment ecosystem for the future of the agentic web by making payments easy anywhere in the world, as agents will need systems to enable payments that are not only fast and secure but also trusted, recorded transparently and executed reliably at a global scale.

Using NET Dollar, Cloudflare says that personal agents will be able to take instant, programmatic actions like paying for the cheapest flight or ordering an item the moment it goes on sale. Business agents could also be instructed to pay suppliers when a delivery is confirmed.

Cloudflare also believes that NET Dollar will unlock a new business model for the internet by allowing creators to be rewarded for unique and original content, developers to easily monetize application programming interfaces and applications and to allow AI companies to contribute back to the ecosystem that fuels them by compensating content sources fairly.

It’s a bold move by Cloudflare. Stablecoins are hardly new, but Cloudflare’s twist — creating NET Dollar as a complement to agentic AI systems — could find a willing audience. But it’s not exactly an easy ask, as outside existing cryptocurrency markets, stablecoins have never had widespread acceptance.

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