Stripe

Stripe is a payments and financial infrastructure company whose APIs let software businesses accept payments, manage subscriptions and billing, send payouts and handle other money movement online. Developers know it for card payments, Stripe Billing for subscriptions and usage-based pricing, and Stripe Connect, which lets marketplaces and platforms route funds between buyers and sellers.

For teams building with AI agents, Stripe's most relevant work is its machine payments documentation. It describes how an API or service can return a payment challenge, how an agent can present a valid payment credential, and how Stripe settles the payment into the merchant's Stripe balance. Stripe says machine payments work best with the Machine Payments Protocol (MPP), which can accept card and stablecoin payments, and that it also supports stablecoin payments over the x402 protocol. Card payments use Shared Payment Tokens, which are scoped grants that let an agent use a customer's payment method with usage and expiration limits. Stripe's docs label machine payments as a Frontier feature, so availability depends on country and approval.

Stripe is also the payment partner behind a capability in AWS WAF. On June 15, 2026, Stripe said it would provide the financial infrastructure for AWS WAF AI traffic monetization, which lets content owners charge AI bots and agents per request. On November 5, 2026, AWS said publishers can connect a Stripe account through Stripe Connect and have stablecoin payments from agents settle in local currency to their Stripe balance, with reporting alongside other payment providers in the AWS WAF console.

Stripe's pricing is usage-based, with processing fees that vary by payment method, country and product, so check the official pricing page before modelling costs. Alternatives for taking payments include PayPal, Adyen, Checkout.com and Paddle, plus merchant-of-record services that handle sales tax on a seller's behalf. Teams that only need to meter and charge for agent access to a single API can also use edge-level options from Cloudflare. Stripe's documentation and dashboard are the official starting points for setup.