AWS opens agent payment service to all developers

Amazon Web Services has moved AgentCore payments out of preview and into general availability, giving developers a managed way for AI agents to pay for application programming interfaces, Model Context Protocol servers and paid web content without human involvement at each step, the company said in an announcement dated August 18. The service, part of Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, was built with Coinbase and Stripe and first appeared in preview on May 7.

Developers connect a Coinbase Developer Platform wallet or a Stripe Privy wallet as a payment source and set session-level spending limits. When an agent meets a paid resource and receives an HTTP 402 response, the service handles protocol negotiation, wallet authentication, stablecoin payment and proof delivery back to the endpoint without interrupting the agent’s reasoning, according to AWS. Spending caps are enforced at the infrastructure layer rather than by the model.

General availability adds several capabilities beyond the preview. The service now supports the Machine Payment Protocol alongside the x402 protocol Coinbase developed, and adds an “upto” scheme in x402 that allows pay-per-inference pricing. A Quick Create option provisions Coinbase credentials inside the AgentCore console, while Stripe Privy credentials must still be obtained from the Privy dashboard.

Agents can reach more than 10,000 pay-per-use endpoints through a Coinbase Bazaar server available via AgentCore Gateway, AWS said. Transactions are logged to Amazon CloudWatch with audit trails and metrics covering success rates and average transaction values.

The service can be configured through the AWS console, a command-line interface, or integrations with open-source agent frameworks including Strands Agents, LangGraph and OpenClaw, according to The Paypers. At preview the service was limited to four regions: Northern Virginia, Oregon, Frankfurt and Sydney.

AWS said the shift reflects service providers moving from subscription pricing toward pay-per-use models where individual charges can amount to a few cents, and publishers increasingly blocking or charging for agent traffic. The company has previously said it intends to extend the service beyond micropayments for data and APIs to larger transactions such as travel and hotel bookings.