The rise of agentic AI, software that acts and transacts without human input, is reshaping how developers think about payments infrastructure. Pay.sh, launched on May 5, 2026, is one response to that shift.
The Solana Foundation and Google Cloud have launched Pay.sh, a payment gateway that lets AI agents access and pay for APIs using stablecoins on Solana.
What Pay.sh Does
Pay.sh allows agents to discover APIs, receive live rates, and pay per request directly from a Solana wallet. The service supports select Google Cloud APIs, including Gemini, BigQuery, BigTable, Cloud Run, and Vertex AI.
Pay.sh operates as an API proxy built on Google Cloud, sitting in front of services such as BigQuery, Gemini, and Cloud Run. The proxy authenticates and modifies an agent’s request before routing it to the Google Cloud backend, and adds payments via x402 or MPP.
A Solana Foundation representative noted that agents can tap five sources per query, paying a fraction of a cent for each call, rather than paying for a full subscription.
How It Works
Users can link Solana wallets to various AI platforms, including Google’s Gemini and systems like Openclaw, and top up their balances using a credit card or stablecoins.
Pay.sh runs an API proxy on Google Cloud Platform that sits between the AI agent and backend Google Cloud services. Instead of relying on traditional credentials, an agent’s Solana wallet acts as its identity. Payment through x402 authorizes the request through a verified endpoint with rate limits, quotas, and access controls. Settlement happens in stablecoins over Solana, with providers receiving funds after reconciliation.
For developers, Pay.sh is available as a command-line interface (CLI). It works in LLM interfaces including Gemini, Claude Code, Codex, Openclaw, Hermes, and more.
Pay.sh Marketplace and Enterprise Features
The platform also includes more than 50 community API facilitators across ecommerce, market data, communications, and blockchain infrastructure. This includes blockchain infrastructure providers Helius and Alchemy, and data services Dune Analytics and Nansen.
For enterprise use, organizations can expose private datasets from BigQuery and Cloud Run applications to AI agents via the x402 protocol, allowing agents to discover and pay per request without manual API keys or human billing setups.
The Underlying Protocol, x402
Pay.sh is built on x402, an open payment standard. The x402 protocol, originally created by Coinbase, moved to the Linux Foundation on April 2, 2026. The x402 Foundation launched with a broad set of industry participants including Google, AWS, Microsoft, Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Shopify, Cloudflare, Circle, the Solana Foundation, and Polygon Labs.
“As AI agents become autonomous participants in the digital economy, the ability to execute secure, frictionless payments is no longer optional — it’s foundational. At AWS, we see protocols like x402 as an important step toward making payments a native part of agent workflows.”
Preethi C N, Director AgentCore, Amazon Web Services
The x402 protocol revives the HTTP “402 Payment Required” status code, turning it into a functional payment handshake. When an AI agent requests a paid resource, the server responds with a 402 status containing machine-readable price and settlement details.
Pay.sh also supports the Machine Payments Protocol (MPP). MPP was developed by Tempo and Stripe.
“The shift toward agentic commerce requires cloud infrastructure that is as open as the protocols it supports. By joining the x402 Foundation, Google is reinforcing its commitment to interoperable standards that enable secure, AI-driven transactions across platforms.”
James Tromans, Managing Director, Web3 and Digital Assets, Google Cloud
Why Solana Network Is a Good Fit for Agentic Payments
Pay.sh arrives as major tech and crypto companies race to build payment infrastructure for autonomous AI systems. Coinbase unveiled an x402 app store for agents last month. Google also revealed an AI agent payments protocol backed by Coinbase and the Ethereum Foundation earlier this year. Firms like Stripe and MoonPay have also made recent moves to give AI agents the power to transact with stablecoins.
On the network side, stablecoins on Solana now exceed $11 billion in circulation and account for over 200 million transactions every month. Solana’s 400ms transaction finality and $0.00025 transaction costs position it as a settlement layer for x402 payments. Across the x402 ecosystem more broadly, the protocol has processed over 140 million transactions and more than $600 million in volume, with approximately 500,000 active agent wallets and an average payment of $0.31.
