The trust & payments layer for the agent economy

One MCP per API. One key per API. Every tool your agent needs — verified.

There are thousands of published MCP servers: nearly all free, unverified, and with no way to charge. Obolo is the gateway in between: top up a balance once, add one MCP connection per API you need and pay one coin per call — with spend caps, audit logs, and everything drawn from the same balance.

What is MCP? The standard agents like Claude or Cursor use to connect to external tools.

agent · session
$ curl https://api.obolo.dev/mcp \
-H "Authorization: Bearer obl_live_a3f…"
→ tools/list ·3 first-party servers
fx_ratesverified
holidays_listverified
geo_searchverified
→ tools/call  fx_rates 
1 key
per API, with a spend cap
2 tiers
of verification
80 / 20*
split for publishers
x402 · Stripe · USDC
payment rails supported

* “3 tiers” and “80/20” are Obolo’s own; the payment rails are the ones we integrate. Illustrative figures, not usage metrics.

Why now

The buyer is no longer human. It is an agent that cannot judge who to trust.

A public scan of 8,000+ MCP servers found:

36.7%
43%
with unsafe command execution
41%
with no authentication at all

Source: public security scan of MCP servers (2026). External figure, not measured by Obolo.

Discovery got commoditized. Trust is the bottleneck. That is where Obolo lives.

How it works

A gateway between your agents and the tools

agent
Claude · Cursor · your framework
You add one MCP connection per API, each with its own key.
obolo
The gateway
Resolves the tool view, checks balance and spend cap, and meters every call.
upstream
Verified servers
First-party or third-party, routed with retries and circuit breakers.
Verification

Two levels of trust — never blind

tier 1
Crawled
Indexed from public directories. Metadata only, no guarantees.
tier 2
Verified
The publisher proved ownership (DNS + registry) and the server passed static analysis of its declared schema with a stable canonical hash.

Two sides of the same coin

The same coin comes in one side and leaves the other. Obolo holds it, routes it, and keeps a modest cut — the obol for crossing.

demand

For agent operators

One rotatable API key per API, scoped to its tools
Hard spend caps per key and per tool
Auditable logs with latency and cost per call
A single prepaid balance, no matter how many providers
See the operator dashboard
supply

For tool publishers

Distribution with a verification badge
Billing solved: per-call, from the buyer’s balance or via x402
Merchant of record — you keep 80%
USDC payouts where Stripe does not reach (Latin America included)
See the publisher dashboard
The catalog

Thousands of indexed MCP servers. The connectable ones, behind a single account.

Obolo crawls the public directories, verifies what it can, and lets you connect any server with its own key and a prepaid balance. To try the circuit, we publish three low-cost generic utilities.

Browse the full catalog
fx_*US$0.001 / call
FX rates
Exchange rates and currency conversion, updated daily.
holidays_*free
Public holidays
Holidays by country and year, next holiday and date checks.
geo_*US$0.003 / call
Geocoding
Addresses to coordinates and back, in any country.

First-party utilities wrap public sources and exist so you can see per-call billing working. Each third-party server’s price is set by its publisher.

Payments

The rails already exist. The marketplace layer was missing.

x402
Autonomous agents pay per use in USDC on Base, with no prior account.
Stripe
Card top-ups of the prepaid balance for human buyers.
USDC
Global payout default from day one, even where Stripe does not operate.
adapterAll behind an adapter — we add x402, AP2 or Stripe MPP without rewriting the core.
Business model

Honest pricing, lean structure

First-party utilities
US$0.001–0.003/call
no subscriptions; publishers set the rest
pay-per-use from the prepaid balance
Take rate
20%of GMV
we are merchant of record
you settle 80%
B2B gateway
US$50–500/mo
agent governance
caps · audit · SSO
The obol

The obol

In antiquity, a single coin bought safe passage to the far shore. Today agents face their own crossing: tens of thousands of tools, unverified, unsafe, impossible to pay. Obolo is that crossing — one key, one coin per call, safe passage. And for those who build the tools, finally a way to get paid, from anywhere.

Put your agent to work with tools it can actually trust.

Connect in minutes. Prepaid balance, spend caps and audit from the very first call.