Why Qwery

In the evolving landscape of AI agents and modern APIs, there is a growing demand for payment systems that support granular, usage-based pricing models. Traditional solutions often impose prohibitive fees or require cumbersome workflows that hinder adoption. Qwery addresses these pain points by providing a purpose-built infrastructure for micropayments in the $0.01–$0.10 range per API call. Specifically, AI agents and API consumers require:

• Low-Value Transaction Support: Enabling pay-per-call pricing without the overhead of high fixed fees (e.g., $0.30 + 2.9% in credit card models), which renders small transactions uneconomical.

• Machine-Native Payments: Automated, non-interactive payment flows that agents can execute programmatically—no need for user interfaces, form fillings, or manual confirmations.

• Instant Settlement with Receipts: Near-real-time confirmation of payments coupled with immutable, cryptographic receipts stored on the blockchain for transparency and trust.

Legacy payment rails, such as Stripe or PayPal, struggle with these requirements due to high latency, compliance hurdles, and human-centric designs. The x402 protocol proposes a standard for cryptocurrency-based API payments, but implementing it from scratch involves significant engineering effort.Qwery bridges this gap by compressing what would typically require months of development—building wallet infrastructure, integrating blockchain nodes, handling edge cases in transaction verification—into just a few lines of code. Providers can focus on their core API logic while Qwery manages the payment layer, resulting in faster time-to-market and reduced operational overhead.