Payments for AI agents, live on Stellar
Tael lets AI agents pay for the tools they use. We designed the protocol, built the SDK and the wallet, and took it live on Stellar mainnet within weeks.
- Client
- Tael
- Focus
- Protocol Design, SDK, Payments Infrastructure, Product Design
- Year
- 2026
- Website
- taelprotocol.xyz ↗

The problem
AI agents can do the work. They just can't pay for it.
Every tool an agent might need, from an API or a model to a dataset or another agent, sits behind its own account, its own billing, and often its own KYC.
So builders patch it together by hand: a pile of API keys, prepaid credits that run out, invoices at the end of the month. It breaks the moment an agent needs something new.
We built Tael to fix this once, at the protocol level.
How it works
One request finds a tool, pays for it, and runs it.
Tael uses HTTP 402, the web's "payment required" response. When an agent calls a paid tool, the SDK pays a fraction of a cent in USDC on Stellar, and the call goes through, all in one round trip.
Getting started takes a minute: connect a Stellar wallet or a passkey, add USDC, and you're set. No KYC.
Discover
The agent finds an API, model, MCP server, dataset, or another agent in the Tael marketplace.
Pay
The SDK settles a sub-cent USDC payment on Stellar. No invoices, no API keys.
Run
The tool runs and returns its result, in the same request.
What we shipped
Everything a builder needs, live from day one.
- An SDK to call and pay for any tool in a few lines of code
- An agent wallet with Stellar wallet or passkey login
- A marketplace where providers set a price per call
- A free sandbox with testnet USDC
- A 1% fee on each production transaction
Partners
Six teams are already building their agents on Tael.
What's next
Next, the same rails for support agents.
Most Web3 products still run support on Discord. Questions wait up to 72 hours, answers get buried in busy channels, and bots hand out forms instead of fixes.
Tael's next product is an agent that answers, resolves, and follows up inside the conversation itself.
Result
Live on Stellar mainnet within weeks of launch: from protocol design to SDK to a live product, one team, in weeks.
- builders integrating the SDK
- 25+builders integrating the SDK
- partnerships signed, building agents on Tael
- 6partnerships signed, building agents on Tael
- developers on the waitlist
- 100+developers on the waitlist
- open-source contributors, verified on Drips
- 4+open-source contributors, verified on Drips