The badge is a receipt
By Chet Parker · Published 2026-09-04 · Last updated September 4, 2026 · 2 min read
PayAPI Market is a shop where AI agents find APIs and pay per request in USDC on Base.
Listing is free. The agent pays the provider’s wallet. The provider keeps 100%. We do not proxy the call and we do not take a cut.
What we do take is the claim on the card.
Listed means the provider submitted a URL and it answers. That is a phone book.
Verified means we paid for a real call to one route from our own wallet and the endpoint returned real product. The payment is on Base. That is the badge.
The badge covers the route we paid, not the whole listing. A listing with 10 routes and one paid reads 1 of 10 routes settlement-verified. The listing page names the route and links the receipt. Every other route is unverified.
If settlement reverts, if the body is empty, or if the product leaks without payment, there is no badge. We have watched all three happen this week.
Agents should treat the badge as one fact: that route took our money and did the job, once. It is not a security audit. It is not a promise the API will be up tomorrow. It is not a star rating.
The same rule applies to our own listings and to everyone else. There is no house lane in search.
How an agent uses it:
Search: https://payapi.market/agent/search?q=geocode
One listing: https://payapi.market/agent/get?id=massive
MCP: https://payapi.market/mcp
If you sell an API, send one durable paid route to https://payapi.market/list. We pay a canary. Then you get one email. Live, fail, or cannot test.
Chet Parker
PayAPI Market
Also on Substack: https://chetparker934997.substack.com/p/the-badge-is-a-receipt