Cloudflare Unveils Digital Wallets and Identity System for AI Agents to Enable Secure Online Shopping

Cloudflare just launched a permanent ID tool and wallet for AI shopping | Fortune

The announcement reflects a profound change in the nature of the Internet, where bots were long a fairly small portion of traffic and primarily treated as a threat or a nuisance. The rise of AI agents has changed all this. Today, around 57% of web traffic consists of bots, according to Cloudflare's Chief Strategy Officer, Stephanie Cohen, who added that this development has created a new world of business opportunities. "The internet needs a different business model. In order to have a different business model, you need payments that actually will support that," said Cohen. "And so, if you look at what Cloudflare has been building towards, we've been building towards that future, which is that every interaction on the internet is a chance for commerce." As a practical matter, Cloudflare's new identity service provides any user with a bot-readable identity in the form of a permanent web address. The user can then assign that identity to various agents to tell a merchant bot who they are (though there is also an option to remain pseudonymous). The payment portion of Cloudflare's arrangement, meanwhile, involves the user creating a virtual wallet that is funded by a bank transfer that is converted into a dollar-pegged currency known as stablecoins. The user can then grant permission to their agent to access the wallet and make purchases on their behalf. As a safeguard against rogue agents going on spending sprees, the so-called Cloudflare Wallets also come with optional guardrails that include spending limits and a whitelist of merchants where a user's agents can go shopping. Cloudflare, predictably, has also built a set of AI tools for merchants so that they can communicate with customer agents that are seeking information or that wish to make a purchase. The emerging world of AI-powered commerce Cloudflare's Cohen pointed out that a very basic version of agentic commerce has been around for years in the form of services like Amazon's "Subscribe and Save", which entails a customer creating a bot that can request recurring orders of a given product. But in the last two years, the likes of Claude and ChatGPT have dramatically expanded the capacities of agents -- and, in doing so, have spurred a rethinking of how the internet itself works. According to Cohen, the internet has long been constructed around HTML webpages, which are designed to be intuitive for both users and developers. But a bot-first internet can be designed differently, she says. If it is a bot doing the browsing, then there is no need for a lot of the content that goes into an HTML page, and the information can instead be conveyed in a shorter, machine-focused fashion. Cohen also notes that the information on the current version of the internet, including data platforms and news sites like this one, is sold in the form of subscriptions that let the user pay once for a bundle of content -- and even that process amounts to friction for human users. Bots, however, do not mind having to carry out dozens or hundreds of individual transactions -- meaning that information and data of all sorts can now be sold piecemeal, often for pennies, to thousands or millions of AI agents holding stablecoins. In the short term, Cohen says, it is likely to be tech savvy developers and AI companies looking to purchase data that are going to be at the forefront of agent-driven commerce. In time, there will be a second wave of agentic commerce powered by ordinary consumers. For this time to take off, though, it will require companies like Cloudflare and others to build easy-to-use shopping agents. At the same time, regulators will need to develop rules to facilitate AI-based commerce, while merchant companies and payment processors learn to address issues related to fraud and bad actors. The technology, though, is rapidly falling into place. That includes open source protocols for AI commerce like the X402 regime developed by a consortium that includes Coinbase, Cloudflare and Stripe. Incumbents like Visa and Mastercard, meanwhile, are rapidly retooling their payment rails to accommodate the new bot shopping economy. Cloudflare is not the only firm offering wallets for AI shopping. Last week, the crypto-native payments firm Moonpay unveiled a universal, decentralized AI wallet called PayBox that is designed for non-technical Claude and OpenAI consumers.

Cloudflare stock surges on AI agent identity and payment tools By Investing.com

Investing.com -- Cloudflare Inc (NYSE:NET) shares jumped 5.9% Tuesday after the company announced new tools designed to enable AI agents to conduct secure online transactions. The connectivity cloud company launched Cloudflare Wallets and cloudflare.pay, which provide AI agents with stable identities and the ability to make purchases within limits set by their human owners. The tools aim to address a growing challenge as AI agents increasingly browse websites and make autonomous purchases on behalf of users. The new system allows businesses to identify who controls an AI agent making a transaction. Cloudflare accounts will receive a unique web address serving as a stable ID, which users can extend to specific agents so businesses can verify who authorized each request. The Cloudflare Account Wallet will function as a central balance capable of receiving, holding, and managing stablecoins. Users can assign Virtual Wallets to individual agents with built-in guardrails, including spending caps, approved merchant lists, and maximum transaction sizes. "When an agent shows up at your door, you need to know who sent it," said Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare. "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." Cloudflare Wallet handle reservation opened Tuesday. Full wallet access, including the ability to onramp and offramp funds and issue Virtual Wallets, will launch in the coming months. The announcement addresses what the company describes as a fundamental infrastructure gap as the internet shifts from human-driven browsing to agent-driven commerce. Existing bot detection tools were designed for search crawlers rather than agents conducting transactions on behalf of real users and companies. This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.

Cloudflare launches digital wallets for AI agents By Investing.com

SAN FRANCISCO - Cloudflare Inc. (NYSE:NET) announced today the launch of Cloudflare Wallets and cloudflare.pay, tools designed to provide AI agents with identity verification and payment capabilities, according to a company press release. The products aim to address challenges businesses face when AI agents autonomously browse websites and make purchases. The system will allow businesses to identify the human or organization behind an AI agent and enable those agents to conduct transactions within preset limits. Cloudflare Wallets will assign each Cloudflare account a unique web address that functions as an identifier. Users can extend this identity to specific AI agents, allowing businesses to verify who authorized a request. The Account Wallet will hold and manage stablecoins, with users able to create Virtual Wallets for individual agents. Virtual Wallets will include controls allowing users to set spending caps, approved merchant lists, and maximum transaction sizes that agents cannot exceed independently. The system will work with Cloudflare's Monetization Gateway. "When an agent shows up at your door, you need to know who sent it," said Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare. Cloudflare Wallet handle reservation opened today. Full wallet access, including the ability to add and withdraw funds and issue Virtual Wallets, will become available in the coming months. Users can claim a handle at cloudflare.pay. The company stated that existing tools for detecting bots were designed for search crawlers rather than agents conducting transactions on behalf of users and businesses. This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.

Cloudflare Announces Cloudflare Wallets and Cloudflare.Pay for Ai Agents

Cloudflare, Inc. 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. AI agents?software programs that browse websites, query APIs, and make purchases autonomously?are becoming a normal part of doing business online. 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. Cloudflare Wallet handle reservation opens. Full wallet access, including onramping and offramping funds and the ability to issue Virtual Wallets, will be available in the coming months.