Cloudflare, a company known for its “connectivity cloud,” has announced its intention to launch NET Dollar, a stablecoin backed by dollars that aims to become the native payment medium for an increasingly AI-driven Internet. The proposal comes with a simple yet ambitious promise: enabling instant, secure, and global payments so that agents, developers, and creators can transact automatically and reliably.
The approach responds to a fundamental shift. Generative AI doesn’t just write, draw, or code: it begins to act on behalf of users. These agents already book flights, place orders, set reminders, or compare prices. If interactions are automated, the financial system supporting these actions must also evolve. Decades ago, the web economy relied on advertising and bank transfers. The next stage, according to Cloudflare, will be built on pay-as-you-go, microtransactions, and pay-per-use tools, which shift incentives: rewarding originality and utility, while reducing friction to monetize APIs and applications.
Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO, summarizes this shift with a change of course: for years, the engine of the Internet’s economy was advertising and traditional payments; the next phase will require money moving at the speed of the web, with tiny, programmable payments that support creative and valuable content, all with the reliability and reach of a global infrastructure.
Why now: AI agents that act, not just suggest
Until recently, browsing was manual; users decided with each click. The arrival of autonomous agents — capable of consuming APIs, reading contexts, and taking programmatic actions — changes the unit of work on the Internet. The personal agent that searches for the cheapest fare, adds a product to the cart, and completes the purchase in milliseconds; the business agent that settles with a supplier upon delivery confirmation. None of this fits well with systems that take hours or days to settle, lack programmability, and penalize small amounts.
A stablecoin like NET Dollar — being pegged to the dollar — aims to provide a value exchange medium with stability and acceptability on a global scale, but with Internet properties: almost instant settlement, automation via code, and transparent auditability. It’s not about replacing banking, emphasizes the company, but about complementing it with a lane that covers use cases for the web of agents.
What NET Dollar proposes: three pillars for a new payment model
1) Easy payments, anywhere.
Agents need fast, secure, but also reliable and traceable payments. Cloudflare envisions operating over its global network —one of the largest worldwide— so that settling is as predictable as delivering content or mitigating attacks. The multi-continental scale, redundancy, and connectivity visibility are the foundation of this promise.
2) Instant, automated transactions.
Programmatic payment — “pay the cheapest flight now,” “buy when stock is available,” “transfer upon delivery confirmation” — is the basic unit of value within the agent web. An executable stablecoin with conditions and events allows automation of these flows without human intervention, with clear rules and observability.
3) An economic model that rewards originality.
With microtransactions and pay-per-use, a creator could charge cents, or many cents, each time an agent consumes their content or metadata; a developer could charge per API call; an AI provider could compensate sources that feed their models. The friction of minipayments has historically prevented such models; Cloudflare aims to reduce it.
Infrastructure and standards: beyond “tokens”
Cloudflare positions NET Dollar within an open ecosystem. It’s not limited to the asset itself: it supports standards like Agent Payments Protocol and x402 — aimed at facilitating payments for agents and web experiences— that simplify sending and receiving money over the Internet. The goal is for developers to embed native payments into their applications and agents without reinventing the wheel, ensuring interoperability and security.
Those interested in participating from the start — developers, creators, AI teams — can register their interest at netdollar.cloudflare.com. The message is clear: this is about building the next layer of the Internet in an open manner, not creating a walled garden.
A use case with many beneficiaries: from “paywall” to “pay-per-prompt”
For creators and media outlets.
Micro-compensation for fragments — an infographic, a paragraph, a semantic summary reused by an agent — opens new revenue streams that are difficult to tap with advertising or all-or-nothing subscriptions. With microtransactions, one can price the unit of value, not the bundle.
For developers and startups.
Monetizing APIs and applications through pay-per-use enables cost and revenue alignment and allows scaling without complex negotiations for minimum amounts. Agents — major consumers of APIs — become ideal clients for this model.
For AI companies.
Massively consuming content for training and inference can be compensated through programmable mechanisms that reward contributors across the ecosystem — from large catalogs to small authors. It’s not a complete solution for data remuneration, but it adds a practical mechanism.
What about trust? Backing, security, and transparency
The announcement emphasizes that NET Dollar will be backed by US dollars. This pegging is the foundation of the stability of a stablecoin: users must know that 1 NET Dollar ≈ 1 USD. Beyond this, security relies on multiple levels: Cloudflare’s network infrastructure, transparent transaction records, and the commitment to align with open standards that facilitate auditability and interoperability.
A necessary caveat: it’s a plan, not an available product today
Cloudflare accompanies the announcement with customary forward-looking statements: NET Dollar and its features are not yet generally available; timelines may change; and the expected benefits depend on external factors and development itself. In other words, it’s a roadmap — and a positioning — rather than a ready-to-use button. The company refers to its regulatory filings in the U.S. to understand risks and conditions.
This nuance is important for another reason: stablecoins operate within a regulatory environment that evolves by jurisdiction. The ambition to be “global” requires local compliance and coexistence with existing financial systems. While the announcement doesn’t delve into regulatory specifics, it makes clear that NET Dollar is yet another tool within a broader set aimed at enabling a fast, trustworthy, and interoperable web of agents.
What impact could it have on the Internet economy?
If NET Dollar and its associated standards succeed, payment frictions on the Internet could decrease. This would lead to second- and third-order effects:
- Less dependence on advertising as the sole revenue stream and more options for value-based payments.
- Granular monetization of microservices and data — addressing what’s currently lost when charging only full units.
- Markets of agents that buy and sell services among themselves, without human intermediaries.
At the same time, questions arise: how to prevent abuse, how to manage agent identities that pay and collect, and how to ensure compensations reach the intended recipients. Part of the answer lies in standards and auditing; another in the platform policies that adopt these tools.
From connectivity to transactions: Cloudflare’s evolution
The company has been extending its core network — acceleration, security, edge computing — toward “control plane” services: from application development to threat protection. NET Dollar pushes this frontier toward the payment layer, leveraging what Cloudflare already possesses: a distributed network with global presence and low latency. If it can move packets and block threats at scale, its argument is that it can also move value with similar properties.
What developers and creators can do today
Cloudflare has opened a register of interest at netdollar.cloudflare.com for developers, creators, and AI teams interested in testing, giving feedback, and co-creating the model. The public roadmap includes work on standards such as Agent Payments Protocol and x402, key to making sending and receiving payments straightforward and predictable on the web.
Conclusion: an initiative for “money at the speed of the Internet”
The announcement of NET Dollar is more than introducing a new digital asset: it’s proposing an economic model for an Internet operated by agents. If successful, tiny payments will cease to be a technical challenge and become a routine act: an agent paying for a query, an image, or data. If it stalls, the experiment will still provide valuable insights into what the new web needs to sustain creativity and innovation without recreating past frictions.
For its part, Cloudflare bets on what it knows best: global networks, open standards, and services operating at planetary scale. Time will tell if NET Dollar becomes the currency preferred by agents — or the lane that catalyzes an Internet where paying cents is as natural as loading a page.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is NET Dollar, and how does a dollar-backed stablecoin work?
NET Dollar is a stablecoin Cloudflare plans to launch, backed by U.S. dollars to maintain an approximate 1:1 parity. Its goal is to enable instant, secure, and programmable payments on the web, designed for AI agents, developers, and creators. Pegged to the USD, it aims to offer stability amid the typical volatility of other crypto assets.
What problem does NET Dollar solve on an AI-driven web?
Agents require automatic, low-value transactions executed instantly. Traditional payment lanes are slow and expensive for microtransactions. NET Dollar aims to enable pay-per-use, micro-payments, and automation (e.g., paying upon delivery confirmation) so the agent web operates frictionlessly.
How can NET Dollar benefit creators and developers online?
By reducing the friction of micro-payments, creators can charge for content units (fragments, metadata), and developers can monetize APIs and applications via pay-per-use. AI companies could also compensate content sources programmatically, fostering a more sustainable ecosystem.
When will NET Dollar be available, and how can one participate in its initial phase?
Cloudflare indicates this is an in-progress initiative; launch timelines and conditions may change. Those interested in participating or tracking progress can register at netdollar.cloudflare.com. The company also develops standards like Agent Payments Protocol and x402 to facilitate interoperability of payments across the web.
via: Cloudflare