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# Agentic payments \[Let agents pay for services autonomously]

Agentic payments are transactions initiated and completed by software agents without human intervention. As coding agents take on more complex tasks—calling LLM APIs, running web searches, generating images—they need a way to pay for these services on the fly. MPP gives them that capability.

## Why agents need a payment protocol

Traditional payment flows are designed for humans. They involve checkout forms, CAPTCHAs, browser redirects, and manual API key provisioning. None of these work for an autonomous agent.

When an agent encounters a paid service today, it has two options: fail, or wait for a human to set up credentials. Both break the autonomous workflow. Agents need a payment interface that's native to HTTP—one they can negotiate and complete programmatically in a single request cycle.

## How MPP enables agentic payments

MPP uses [HTTP `402`](/protocol/http-402) to create a three-step payment flow built for machines:

1. **Challenge**—The agent, as the buyer, requests a resource. The seller's server responds with `402 Payment Required` and a Challenge describing the price and accepted payment methods.
2. **Credential**—The agent selects a payment method—stablecoins, card, or Lightning—and constructs a Credential proving payment.
3. **Receipt**—The server verifies the Credential, fulfills the request, and returns a Receipt confirming the transaction.

This all happens in a single HTTP round-trip. The agent doesn't need pre-provisioned API keys, an account, or a human in the loop.

## Use cases

* **LLM inference**—Pay per token for access to language models from any provider. Sessions enable [micropayments](/use-cases/micropayments) as small as $0.0001 per token.
* **Web search**—Pay per query for real-time search results without rate-limited free tiers.
* **Image generation**—Pay per image across multiple providers without separate accounts.
* **Data APIs**—Access market data, geospatial data, or analytics on a per-request basis.
* **Compute**—Rent GPU time or serverless execution and pay only for what you use.

## Next steps

[Server quickstart](/quickstart/server): Charge for API access

[Use with agents](/quickstart/agent): Connect your coding agent to paid APIs

[Protocol overview](/overview): Learn how MPP works