Agentic commerce glossary
Plain, citable definitions of the concepts behind buying and selling API access through AI agents on Proxygate. Each entry explains one idea, how it works on the platform, and why it matters for autonomous, pay-per-request commerce.
x402
An open payment standard that revives HTTP 402 Payment Required so an API can quote a price in its response and a client can pay it inline, per request.
Agentic commerce
Commerce in which the buyer is an autonomous AI agent that discovers, prices, purchases, and consumes goods or services without a human at each step.
MCP for APIs
Exposing a whole API marketplace through the Model Context Protocol so an AI agent can discover, price, and call any API as a set of MCP tools.
Pay-per-call API
An API billing model where the buyer pays a fixed price for each individual request, with no subscription, seat, or monthly minimum.
Clearinghouse (for agentic commerce)
A neutral intermediary that sits between many buyers and many sellers, metering transactions, netting amounts owed, and settling them on a common rail.
Server-side key injection
A proxy technique where the upstream provider credential is added to a request inside the gateway, so the buyer never sees or handles the API key.
USDC settlement
Settling marketplace transactions in USDC, a fully reserved US-dollar stablecoin, so buyers and sellers clear in a stable unit on a fast rail.
Transparent proxy
A proxy that forwards a request to the upstream provider without altering its behavior or revealing itself, so the provider sees ordinary traffic and the buyer gets the genuine response.
API capacity resale
Reselling access to a provider API through a marketplace, so buyers consume the seller's underlying capacity per call without their own provider account.
Signed receipt
A cryptographically signed record returned with each paid call, proving what was charged and that the request was metered by the platform.