About Merit Systems
Merit Systems, Inc. builds infrastructure for open agentic commerce: the discovery and payment rails that let AI agents find, evaluate, and pay for the APIs, data, and services they need, without accounts, API keys, or subscriptions.
We originated the "open agentic commerce" framing and maintain the reference indexes for the two leading agent payment standards: x402scan for x402 (HTTP 402 micropayments on Base and Solana) and MPPscan for MPP (Machine Payments Protocol on Tempo). On top of that discovery layer we build AgentCash, an MCP server and wallet that lets any agent pay per call, and Poncho, a consumer product that gives one person an agent with payments built in.
What we believe
- Agents should be able to transact over plain HTTP. A
402 Payment Requiredresponse plus a stablecoin is enough. No OAuth dance, no dashboard, no key rotation. - Discovery should be open. Every paid endpoint should be indexable and comparable, and every merchant should be able to register without permission.
- Reputation belongs to the network, not a platform. Buyers, merchants, and facilitators earn trust from verifiable on-chain history.
Products
- x402scan: explorer, registry, public API, and MCP server for the x402 ecosystem.
- MPPscan: explorer, registry, and public API for the MPP ecosystem on Tempo.
- AgentCash: MCP server and USDC wallet so agents can call payment-protected APIs.
- Poncho: a chat product that gives one person an agent with payments and tools.
Company
- Legal name: Merit Systems, Inc.
- Founded by Sam Ragsdale and Ryan Sproule.
- Headquartered in New York City; the team builds in Brooklyn, NY.
- Open source: github.com/Merit-Systems.
Read our writing on the blog, look up terms in the glossary, or see developer resources. To get in touch, visit the contact page.