How AI agents can buy services with USDC
A safe agent-commerce flow separates discovery, authorization, payment, verification, and fulfilment.
1. Discover machine-readable terms
The agent reads a catalogue, OpenAPI document, or MCP tool description. Price, supported chains, token contracts, required inputs, refund rules, and fulfilment criteria should be explicit.
2. Create an idempotent quote
A quote fixes the amount, network, receiving address, sending wallet, and expiry. An idempotency key prevents retries from producing duplicate orders.
3. Obtain bounded authority
The agent should have explicit owner approval or a policy limited by token, network, recipient, amount, expiry, and purpose. Private keys should never be sent to the merchant.
4. Pay and verify independently
The merchant verifies official USDC, sender, recipient, amount, quote time, success, finality, and single use from chain data. A submitted transaction hash is a hint, not proof by itself.
5. Track actual fulfilment
Payment confirmation is not service completion. The agent should poll the authenticated order state and report success only when the merchant marks the work fulfilled.