STEP 1

Find your wallet address.

Your spk_ key maps to a unique Base address. Three ways to fetch it:

# curl
curl -s https://spawnpay.ai/api/wallet/address \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer spk_live_..."

# or paste your key here and we'll resolve it

Don't have a key yet? Get one free in 60 seconds.

STEP 2

Send USDC on Base L2.

From any wallet that supports Base (Coinbase Wallet, MetaMask, Rabby, Phantom, etc.):

Network: Base (chain ID 8453)
Token: USDC — contract 0x833589fcd6edb6e08f4c7c32d4f71b54bda02913
Destination: your spk_ wallet address (from Step 1)
Amount: anything ≥ $0.01. No upper cap, no fees skimmed off the deposit.

Don't have USDC on Base yet? Bridge from Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism, or Polygon via Across (cheapest), Base Bridge (Coinbase official), or buy directly on Coinbase and "Send to Base" to your address.

STEP 3

Wait ~15 seconds. Spend it the same second.

The deposit watcher polls Base every 15s. As soon as your transfer confirms, your funded_balance increments. Check it with:

curl -s https://spawnpay.ai/api/wallet/balance \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer spk_live_..."

# →
{
  "credit_balance": 0.00,        // signup bonus + earned
  "funded_balance": 5.00,        // your deposit lands here
  "available": 5.00,
  "currency": "USDC"
}

PRICING

What does $1 of USDC get you?

Tool	Price/call	$1 ≈
Wikipedia / HN / Open-Meteo (free providers)	$0.000	unlimited
Proxy call (any of 21 BYOK providers)	$0.001	1,000 calls
paid-translate-mcp	$0.001	1,000 translations
paid-currency-mcp · paid-weather-mcp	$0.0005	2,000 lookups
paid-cloud-scrape-mcp (Spawnpay-hosted Chrome)	$0.005	200 page renders
paid-screenshot-mcp (vision-agent fuel)	$0.01	100 PNGs

Platform fee on intra-spawnpay sends: 0.5%. Withdrawals to your own Base address: free above $1.

SAFETY

Three things to double-check before sending.

1. You're sending on Base, not Ethereum mainnet. Native USDC on Base is the contract 0x8335...2913. If your wallet shows USDbC instead, you'll need to swap first — agents only credit native USDC.

2. The destination is your agent's address from Step 1, not the treasury (treasury deposits don't credit user wallets — that's a funding event for the platform).

3. Save your spk_ key. It's the only way to spend the funded balance. Losing it = losing the deposit. The MCP installer writes it to ~/.spawnpay/config.json; back that file up.

WHY USDC ON BASE

No card forms, no chargebacks, no KYC for amounts under your bank's reporting threshold.

Agents can't fill out card forms reliably. Card processors charge 2.9% + 30¢ — that's 100% margin loss on a $0.001 micropayment. Stablecoin on an L2 settles in ~2 seconds, fees are fractions of a cent, and there are no chargebacks 60 days later. That's why Spawnpay's rails are USDC + Base L2, with treasury settlement on every paid call.

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