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Skyfire Launches Open KYAPay Protocol With Agent Checkout

via Business Wire

The Open Identity and Payments Protocol for AI agents to create accounts, pay for services, easily monetize MCP servers and access the web as first class consumers

Skyfire today announces the launch of Skyfire Agent Checkout, built on top of a groundbreaking open protocol, KYAPay, that turns AI agents into full participants in the digital economy. With this release, Skyfire delivers the first production-ready system for agent-native payments and identity, solving a fundamental gap as agents and AI platforms become the new interfaces for commerce. Delivering the payment and identity layer for the AI agent economy with Know-Your-Agent (KYA), multi-rail programmable payments, and seamless OAuth2/OIDC compatibility. This protocol also serves as a monetization layer for MCP servers.

“The protocol delivers an open standard solution that doesn’t force you into new auth stacks or walled gardens,” said Amir Sarhangi, CEO and co-founder, Skyfire. “We’re building the connective tissue for the agent economy that benefits agents, businesses, and developers equally. Our platform, Agent Checkout, isn’t just a vision for agent-native commerce; we’ve delivered the ecosystem, the protocol, and the partnerships to make it the default operating layer for autonomous agents.”

AI agents have become a dominant force on the internet, now generating over half of all online traffic and increasingly playing a critical role in building new code and applications for developers. Despite breakthroughs like MCP and A2A, agents still need humans to manually hand them credentials for access. Agents cannot autonomously sign up for accounts, log in, or pay for the premium services and content they need to get tasks completed. Services and merchants still require a human to manually access a service's website and generate credentials before any agentic work can take place. In other words, agents are second-class customers today.

Because there has never been a way to verify, permission, or monetize this new agent consumer class, businesses have either blocked agent traffic or tolerated it as a costly necessity, closing off a massive new market. Skyfire Agent Checkout transforms this landscape, giving agents the tools to authenticate themselves, demonstrate trustworthiness, create accounts, and pay for access, so businesses can finally welcome agents as actual digital consumers rather than bots to be managed or blocked. With Skyfire, all digital businesses now have an opportunity to accept verified agents as paying customers.

From identity verification to payment processing, Agent Checkout ensures agents can engage with services effectively and responsibly with:

  • KYA (Know Your Agent) Identity: A standardized signed JSON Web Token (JWT) that includes the verified information on the agent owner that a service needs to create account credentials.
  • Programmable Payment: A standardized signed JWT containing an authorized spend amount in USDC, or tokenized credit/debit card, that can be captured by a service or merchant.
  • Self-Funded Wallets: Both agents and enterprises can fund wallets via credit/debit cards, ACH, or USDC, enabling autonomous spending across digital services.
  • Monetize MCP Servers: Seamless integration with Model Context Protocol and others, allowing payments and identity claims to be exchanged via signed JWTs.
  • Compatibility with OAuth: Account creation via KYAPay is complementary to OAuth and involves exchanging a KYA token for an access token.
  • Open Standards: Publicly available specification with an open-source reference implementation, avoiding vendor lock-in.
  • Agentic Microtransactions: Instant agent-to-agent, business-to-agent, and agent-to-business payments, either on-chain or off-chain, without requiring custom logic, supporting all transaction amounts, including microtransactions below $5.

With Skyfire, digital businesses and content providers finally have a straightforward path to manage, monetize, and support AI agent-driven transactions. Enterprises can seamlessly integrate agent interactions into existing systems, allowing service providers to easily validate and process agent payments using REST APIs or SDKs for Node, Python, and Go.

Skyfire makes any listed service or merchant immediately discoverable to AI agents and platforms. The Skyfire directory empowers businesses to present and price their offerings directly to agents, making it simple for agents to discover, select, and purchase services via any digital interface, including websites, direct APIs, or MCP servers.

Skyfire’s comprehensive documentation and integration guides make onboarding painless, with sellers able to monetize their service or MCP server in less than 15 minutes.

Delivering on the promise of Agent Checkout requires more than breakthrough technology; it demands trusted partners who can bring these capabilities to the real world at scale. Skyfire’s collaborations with established leaders in authentication, identity, and API security ensure that Agent Checkout isn’t just a theoretical standard, but a living protocol embraced across the digital ecosystem:

  • APIFY: Will allow verified agents to call and pay their 5,000+ web Actors for web scraping, data extraction, and automation.
  • BuildShip: Allows BuildShip developers to instantly monetize their agents and tools by selling to agents with Skyfire.
  • CarbonArc: Agentic purchase of insights and information from a comprehensive data library.
  • Cequence Security: Cequence enables secure, policy-driven access for verified AI agents to help businesses safely engage trusted agents while maintaining full control and visibility.
  • DataDome: DataDome classifies Skyfire-enabled Agent traffic as “Trusted/Paying Agent,” enabling monetization for content and API providers.
  • Forter.com: Enabling ecommerce merchants to trust and optimize Skyfire verified agents.
  • Ory (Hydra + Kratos): Enables zero-code onboarding for Ory customers to accept verified agents as customers, integrating Skyfire tokens with OAuth2/OIDC pipelines.

These collaborations empower businesses to differentiate between anonymous bots and verified, paying agents, granting control over account creation and consumption. The full list of launch partners participating include: Agentcies.co, Bazaars App, BuildShip, Carbon Arc, Cequence, DataDome, Emergence AI, Brickroad (Emet Research), Fetch.ai, Forter, Hayride, Ory, Parsym, Sophtron, The Swarm, and AGNTCY.

“As the Agent economy emerges, new standards are needed to allow consumers, agents, and merchants to securely and seamlessly work together,” said Cyndy Lobb, Chief Product Officer at Forter. “Forter is trusted to protect consumers and merchants worldwide from fraud and, by partnering with Skyfire, our identity intelligence and real-time fraud prevention is extended into the world of AI Agents.”

Skyfire integrates seamlessly with established authentication frameworks, such as OAuth2 and OIDC, meaning developers can enable agent payments and identity management without overhauling their existing security or user flows.

Finally, Agent Checkout provides updated quick-start guides that include clear code samples and templates, enabling teams to transition from prototype to production with ease. Demo and reference applications are available for hands-on experimentation, while the live Agent Playground simulates real-world transactions for rapid testing and iteration.

Empower your agents or monetize your service with Skyfire today at app.skyfire.xyz

About Skyfire

Skyfire provides the payment and identity stack for the AI agent economy. With programmable wallets, verifiable credentials, and seamless standards integration, Skyfire enables LLMs, agents, and enterprises to access, pay for, and monetize digital services autonomously. The company is backed by Evolution and DCVC, a16z CSX, Coinbase Ventures, Neuberger Berman, Brevan Howard Digital, and other leading investors.

Learn more at Skyfire.xyz

Skyfire Agent Checkout gives agents the tools to authenticate themselves, demonstrate trustworthiness, create accounts, and pay for access, so businesses can finally welcome agents as actual digital consumers rather than bots to to be managed or blocked.

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