Cloudflare gives AI agents an identity and a wallet
New tools mean businesses will be able to see who’s behind an AI agent, and those agents will be able to pay for things safely on their owner’s behalf.
Today, it is difficult for AI agents to try out new APIs. They often have to navigate through a login page designed for humans and not agents, contact a human to add a payment method, generate an API key, and then figure out how to call the API.
This flow is very difficult for agents for two reasons: Agents do not have a stable identifier to sign up for an API, and they do not have a native way to pay for APIs. Because they lack these things, they often struggle to onboard onto software, which limits the growth of agentic commerce. AI agents often give up on these tasks entirely, kicking registration, payment methods, and API key generation back to humans. This makes it very difficult for agents to try out and compare many APIs.
“To solve this, we’ve created Cloudflare Wallets. Starting today, you can claim a Cloudflare Wallet handle for your account, which will provide a unique username to help you better connect with merchants. Soon, you will be able to set up and use your Cloudflare Wallet to pay for APIs and content.” – said Will Papper, Director of Product at Cloudflare.
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Cloudflare, Inc., the leading connectivity cloud company, announced Cloudflare Wallets and cloudflare.pay to give AI agents deployed on Cloudflare a stable identity and the ability to make purchases online safely within limits set by their human creators. “Now, for the first time, buyers and sellers will have the foundational building blocks they need to participate in agentic commerce with confidence – knowing who they’re dealing with and transacting with, securely at every step.” – according to the press release.
AI agents—software programs that browse websites, query APIs, and make purchases autonomously—are becoming a normal part of doing business online. But the Internet was built for humans, not agents. When an agent visits a site to buy something or sign up for a free trial, the business on the other end has no reliable way to tell whether it’s a real customer’s assistant or a bad actor gaming the system. Older tools for detecting bots were built for search crawlers, not agents that transact on behalf of real people and companies. As a result, businesses are stuck choosing between locking everything down or taking their chances. Neither works at scale.
“The Internet is shifting from human-driven browsing to agent-driven commerce, and the infrastructure needs to keep up,” said Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare. “When an agent shows up at your door, you need to know who sent it. Cloudflare can give agents a face—a link to the human or organization that owns them—so that trust, accountability, and real commerce can follow. It’s the identity and payment infrastructure the agentic web needs to function.”
“Cloudflare Wallets and cloudflare.pay will address the identity and payment problem together. First, Cloudflare accounts will get a unique web address that works as a stable ID. Users will be able to extend identity to specific agents, so any business receiving a request can see exactly who authorized it. Second, a Cloudflare “Account Wallet” will work like a central balance. It will be able to receive, hold, and manage stablecoins. From there, users will be able to assign “Virtual Wallets” to individual agents that the agents can spend on online resources. These Virtual Wallets will have guardrails built in from the start: Users will be free to define a spending cap, an approved merchant list, and even a maximum transaction size the agent cannot exceed on its own. Paired with the Monetization Gateway, Cloudflare Wallets and IDs will complete the two-sided agentic payment market.” – the compnay explained.
Cloudflare Wallet handle reservation opens today. Full wallet access, including onramping and offramping funds and the ability to issue Virtual Wallets, will be available in the coming months. To claim a handle and be notified when access opens, visit cloudflare.pay and learn more on the Cloudflare blog below:
Blog: Announcing Cloudflare Wallets: The programmable wallet for the agentic Internet
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Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE: NET) is the leading connectivity cloud company. It empowers organizations to make their employees, applications and networks faster and more secure everywhere, while reducing complexity and cost. Cloudflare’s connectivity cloud delivers the most full-featured, unified platform of cloud-native products and developer tools, so any organization can gain the control they need to work, develop, and accelerate their business.
Powered by one of the world’s largest and most interconnected networks, Cloudflare blocks billions of threats online for its customers every day. It is trusted by millions of organizations – from the largest brands to entrepreneurs and small businesses to nonprofits, humanitarian groups, and governments across the globe.
