Circle Publishes Official USDC Spec for Machine Payments Protocol, Enabling Crosschain Agent-to-Agent Commerce
Circle published a formal $USDC method specification for the Machine Payments Protocol on Monday, standardizing how AI agents and automated services settle payments in $USDC across EVM-compatible blockchains and Solana. The specification, posted at paymentauth.org/draft-usdc-charge-00.html, outlines how $USDC payments can be initiated through the MPP payment challenge-response flow. It introduces three capabilities: a standardized payment interface for agents transacting in $USDC across supported EVM chains and Solana, the first crosschain payment profile in MPP via Circle Gateway, and support for $USDC-backed stablecoins beginning with USDCx on Stacks. Circle announced the spec Monday afternoon via its official account. MPP and HTTP 402 MPP, the Machine Payments Protocol, is an HTTP-native payment standard that revives the long-dormant HTTP 402 “Payment Required” status code. When an agent calls an MPP-enabled endpoint, the server returns a 402 challenge. The agent signs a $USDC payment authorization using EIP-3009, an Ethereum standard for off-chain token transfer authorizations, and retries the request. Circle Gateway verifies the authorization and queues it for batched on-chain settlement. No API key is required; every request is attributable by wallet address and transaction hash. The protocol was developed by engineers from Tempo Labs and Stripe and is formally proposed to the IETF. Circles entry adds $USDC