Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE: NET), a connectivity cloud company, has announced its intention to introduce NET Dollar, a new U.
S. dollar-backed stablecoin. This initiative aims to facilitate instant, secure transactions for what the company refers to as the ‘agentic web,’ a model intended to foster originality, creativity, and innovation within an AI-driven online environment.
Cloudflare’s move responds to the evolving interaction between humans and the internet, where autonomous AI agents are increasingly being delegated tasks such as booking flights, ordering groceries, and managing calendars. The company posits that this shift necessitates an evolution of the underlying financial system, requiring a monetary solution that is instant, global, and secure for AI agents, developers, and creators to conduct transactions automatically and reliably.
Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, stated, “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.” He added that Cloudflare plans to leverage its global network to modernize the financial infrastructure needed for transactions at internet speed, with the goal of fostering a more open and valuable internet.
NET Dollar is designed to provide an internet-native payment system that is fast, secure, and globally accessible, complementing existing financial systems. It aims to modernize the payment ecosystem for the agentic web by enabling payments anywhere in the world, ensuring they are fast, secure, trusted, transparently recorded, and reliably executed across various currencies, geographies, and time zones. The stablecoin will also facilitate instant, automated transactions, allowing personal agents to make programmatic payments and business agents to manage supplier payments upon delivery confirmation.
Furthermore, NET Dollar seeks to unlock a new business model for the internet, enabling creators to be compensated for original content, developers to monetize APIs and applications, and AI companies to contribute to the ecosystem by fairly compensating content sources. Cloudflare is also contributing to open standards such as the Agent Payments Protocol and x402 to streamline online payment processes. Developers, creators, and AI innovators interested in this development can find more information at http://netdollar.cloudflare.com/.
