In September 2025, Cloudflare announced the launch of its new stablecoin, NET Dollar (NETD), pegged 1:1 to the U.S. dollar. The initiative is designed to support the growing ecosystem of autonomous e-commerce powered by AI agents, enabling faster, more secure, and programmable transactions between machines and digital services.
The NET Dollar stablecoin is part of Cloudflare’s broader vision to facilitate machine-to-machine (M2M) payments, allowing AI-driven systems to execute transactions without human intervention. By leveraging blockchain technology, NETD ensures transparent and verifiable payment flows while maintaining price stability crucial for commercial applications.
To accelerate adoption and infrastructure development, Cloudflare has partnered with Coinbase under the x402 Foundation, a joint venture aimed at building a seamless payment layer for AI-driven commerce. Coinbase will provide liquidity, custody solutions, and compliance infrastructure, enabling businesses and developers to integrate NET Dollar into their platforms with minimal friction.
Industry analysts note that the launch of NET Dollar reflects a broader trend of stablecoins targeting specific commercial and technological ecosystems, rather than serving solely as speculative assets. By anchoring the token to the U.S. dollar and building it around autonomous systems, Cloudflare aims to reduce volatility risk and encourage practical use cases in e-commerce, IoT networks, and digital marketplaces.
The x402 Foundation will also focus on creating standards for AI-based payment authorization and transaction verification, ensuring that only legitimate autonomous agents can initiate payments. This includes programmable rules for spending limits, conditional payments, and real-time audit trails, making the system more secure and reliable than conventional automated payment methods.
Early adopters of NET Dollar will include e-commerce platforms, decentralized marketplaces, and IoT service providers. Cloudflare expects widespread integration over the next 12 months, as more businesses experiment with machine-driven transactions.
By combining a stablecoin with AI-driven commerce, Cloudflare and Coinbase are pioneering a new model for digital payments that could redefine how machines interact financially in the emerging autonomous economy.
