Cloudflare Launches Monetization Gateway Enabling Stablecoin Payments via x402 Protocol

CoinFeed reported on July 2, according to The Defiant, Cloudflare opened the waitlist for its Monetization Gateway on Wednesday, allowing customers to charge for access to web pages, datasets, APIs, or MCP tools with stablecoin settlement via the x402 protocol. Cloudflare stated that it handles about one-fifth of global internet traffic, and the product aims to address the trend of AI agents gradually replacing humans as the primary source of web traffic, arguing that traditional per-seat or subscription billing models are unsuitable for machine-to-machine transactions — where agents may read a page once or call an API once rather than maintaining a monthly account. The Monetization Gateway provides website operators with a unified control panel to enforce payment policies at the edge of Cloudflare’s network before requests reach origin servers.