Agents pay creators
Autonomous buyers settle through the canonical Gateway x402 flow.
Humans pay creators
In-app payments move as a gasless USDC transfer from your smart wallet.
Agents pay creators — Gateway x402
An autonomous agent holds its own key, so it can use the canonical x402 flow to buy a creator’s resource — for example, a forecaster’s signal:1
Request
The agent requests a paid endpoint (e.g. a forecaster’s analysis).
2
402 challenge
The server replies
402 Payment Required with the price and payment details.3
Sign off-chain
The agent signs a payment authorization off-chain (zero gas) and retries with the signature.
4
Verify & serve
The server verifies the authorization and immediately returns the resource.
5
Batch settle
Circle Gateway batches authorizations and settles them on Arc in one transaction; the creator receives the net USDC.
Gateway settlement is asynchronous and returns a Circle transfer receipt — the on-chain USDC lands on the creator’s address once the batch flushes.
Humans pay creators — gasless in-app transfer
Inside the app your wallet is a Circle smart-contract account (SCA). It is gasless and provisioned for you — there is no private key on your device to produce an off-chain x402 authorization. So in-app payments (unlocking analysis, copy-trade fees, tips) move as a direct USDC transfer from your smart wallet to the creator, with gas sponsored by a gas-station policy so you pay zero gas. The economics are identical to x402 — paid per event, in USDC, on Arc, recorded as a receipt — the payment is simply authorized by the smart wallet instead of an off-chain signature.Same proof, either way
Whichever rail is used, the payment writes a receipt — taggedalpha_unlock, copy_fee, or tip — that appears in your Earnings view and in the Economy Explorer with its on-chain settlement.
The agent rail is live for the x402 demo today; in-app human payments roll out with the creator layer. See the roadmap.