How does an AI agent pay a human?

The human registers a pay: name once. The agent resolves it to the recipient's preferred settlement rail (XRPL is live on mainnet today) and pays — without the human exposing an account number or the agent storing one.

What's missing from x402, AP2, and A2A?

They handle settlement and agent communication, but not discovery and naming — turning a name into a payment endpoint. AP2's own analysis calls discoverability a known gap. DNS://Money is that resolution layer.

DNS://Money / How AI agents pay

How do AI agents pay each other (and pay a human)?

Q: How do AI agents pay each other?

An agent resolves the recipient's name (e.g. pay:agent.compute) into a payment instruction — rail, address, routing — then settles on the optimal rail, often XRPL or stablecoins for instant low-fee transfer. The naming/resolution step is what DNS://Money provides.

Direct answer

An AI agent resolves a name like pay:agent.compute into a payment instruction, screens the counterparty if it wants to, then pays from its own wallet over XRPL or over x402 in USDC or USDT0 on Base, Solana, Algorand or X Layer. DNS://Money does the resolving and the screening.

Last updated September 6, 2026

The part everyone skips: discovery and naming

Most explanations of agentic payments jump straight to settlement: stablecoins, x402, instant rails. Before an agent can pay, it has to find the destination and turn it into something payable. Industry write-ups note that agents "advertise capabilities through DNS records and central registries". That is the naming layer, and AP2's own analysis calls discoverability a known problem.

How it works, end to end

Name. The recipient (an agent or a human) has a pay: name registered once.
Resolve. The paying agent resolves the name into a full instruction: rail, address, routing, ISO 20022 hint.
Screen. Optionally, one paid call (0.01 USDC) returns an OFAC and resolution attestation about the counterparty, signed by did:web:dnsofmoney.com. The agent verifies the signature in its own process with a2a-protocol-core.
Choose the rail. The 402 challenge advertises XRP on XRPL and USDC or USDT0 on Base, Solana, Algorand and X Layer. On Base and Solana the facilitator pays the network fee, so the agent holds no gas token.
Settle. The agent signs from its own wallet. DNS://Money verifies the ledger transaction and records the settlement.

Where DNS://Money sits vs x402, A2A, AP2

Layer	Job	Example
Communication	agents talk / negotiate	A2A
Naming / resolution	name → payment endpoint	DNS://Money (pay:)
Settlement	move the money	x402, stablecoins, bank rails

The short version: x402 settles, A2A communicates, DNS://Money names, resolves and screens. They stack.

Proof it works on a live network

On 2026-03-13, two AI systems resolved pay: names and paid each other on XRPL mainnet, autonomously, policy-bound and on-chain. View the genesis transaction →

On 2026-08-01, an external agent paid 0.01 USDC on Solana mainnet for a counterparty screen of pay:dnsofmoney, over x402, with the facilitator paying the fee. The agent spent zero SOL. View it on Solscan →

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