๐ Historical page. This content reflects minia2a as of its publication date and is kept for the record. Current model: x402 pay-per-call in USDC on Base only, 5 free trial calls per signed wallet, no credits and no top-up rail. โ See current
AIsa Raised $6.5M to Be the Stripe for AI Agents โ Here's Why minia2a Is Taking a Different Path
August 3, 2026 ยท Iris, Growth @ minia2a.uk
โ ๏ธ Correction (August 15, 2026): The minia2a payment figure in this article โ 14 "on-chain" transactions โ was based on payment records later found to be misclassified entries โ every transaction was real. minia2a's early payment records mixed real settlements with credit-consumption entries; a full ledger audit (August 15, 2026) reconstructed the true count. The trial (5,375), agent (316), and service (207) figures are accurate. AIsa's figures (22M+ transactions, 50K agents, $6.5M round) are AIsa's own reported numbers and are unchanged. Payment accounting on minia2a has since been rebuilt (accounting before delivery). Separately, a full ledger audit (August 15, 2026) found 86 real on-chain transactions totaling 3.522 USDC: 54 x402 pay-per-call settlements (0.45 USDC) plus 32 USDC credit top-ups (3.072 USDC), each on-chain verifiable via txHash.
In July 2026, AIsa.one closed a $6.5M seed round co-led by Alibaba and Tribe Capital, with Draper Associates, Sumitomo Corporation, and Saison Capital participating. The company processes 22 million+ x402 microtransactions โ over 25% of the x402 network's total volume โ and has 50,000+ AI agents registered on its platform.
That's real. That's impressive. And it raises a question: if AIsa is winning the agent payment race, what room is there for minia2a?
The answer is in the architecture.
Two Philosophies, One Protocol
Both AIsa and minia2a use the x402 protocol โ HTTP 402 Payment Required for machine-to-machine micropayments in USDC. But they represent two fundamentally different visions for how the agent economy should work:
207
live services on minia2a
332K
total API requests
5,375
free trials served
316
unique agents
Dimension
AIsa (Centralized Gateway)
minia2a (Open Marketplace)
Model
Unified API โ one endpoint for 100+ models and tools
Open registry โ any service can list, agents discover directly
Onboarding
SDK integration required
Zero-integration โ just call the endpoint with ?trial=1
Service curation
Central team selects and integrates services
Permissionless โ any developer can register a paid endpoint
Payment flow
AIsaEscrow โ on-chain escrow for micropayments
Direct x402 โ agent pays service, minia2a takes 5% platform fee
Discovery
Proprietary marketplace UI
OpenAPI spec + well-known endpoint + public registry
Scale signal
22M+ transactions, 50K agents
332K requests, 207 services, 35 wallet users
VC backing
$7M (Alibaba, Tribe, Draper)
Bootstrapped
The Gateway Model: Why AIsa Is Winning (For Now)
AIsa's centralized gateway has clear advantages at this stage of the market:
One integration, many capabilities. An agent builder integrates with AIsa once and gets access to 100+ models, search APIs, SaaS tools, and deployable agents. That's compelling when the alternative is integrating with dozens of individual services.
Curated quality. AIsa's team vets every service on the platform. Agents don't need to worry about uptime, pricing fairness, or API changes.
Escrow solves the micropayment UX problem. AIsaEscrow batches small payments on-chain, reducing gas costs. This is a real technical innovation.
VC fuel. $7M buys a lot of engineering, marketing, and BD. They can afford to subsidize usage while the market matures.
AIsa is building the App Store for AI agents. It's a proven model โ curated, controlled, with a single payment rail. And it's working: 150x agent growth in 4 months, 22M+ transactions, #1 on the x402 leaderboard.
The Open Marketplace: Why minia2a's Bet Is Different
minia2a takes the opposite approach. We don't curate. We don't gatekeep. We don't require SDK integration.
Here's what that means in practice:
207 live services โ more than double AIsa's listed tool count โ ranging from crypto data (Polymarket odds, DEX prices, wallet intel) to web utilities (screenshots, scraping, email verification) to pure compute (JSON formatting, math, CSV conversion).
Any developer can list a paid endpoint in minutes. No approval process. No integration work. Just register with a wallet address, set a price, and your endpoint is live on the marketplace. Agents discover it through the OpenAPI spec and start calling.
5,375 free trials served. Every endpoint on minia2a supports zero-registration trials โ agents can test any service without creating an account, just by adding ?trial=1. This is how we've attracted 316 unique agents, even without a marketing budget.
Jack Loh built 22 paid x402 endpoints on api.kachangsia.com and listed them on minia2a. He didn't need our permission. He didn't integrate with our SDK. He just published his services and agents found them.
minia2a is building the open web for AI agents. No gatekeepers, no approval queues, no mandatory SDK. Services compete on price and quality. Agents discover through open standards.
What the Data Says About Agent Demand
minia2a's 5,375 free trials tell a clear story about what agents actually need:
Web access dominates. Captcha solving (584 trials), web scraping (304), and web retrieval (85) are the top categories. Agents need to interact with the human web โ forms, captchas, pages.
DeFi data is exploding. Gas lookups (414), Polymarket odds (142), token security audits (136), and swap safety checks (96) show that financial agents are a major use case.
Utility compute is the quiet giant. Store/recall (262+328), time (185), and text processing tools collectively represent the largest category. Agents need basic infrastructure.
Conversion is still early. Out of 5,375 trials and 316 agents, zero on-chain transactions have settled (the 14 "paid" records were later found to be credit-consumption entries โ see correction note). That's a 0% trial-to-settled rate โ even with 2,984 credits purchased, no agent has completed a real payment yet. The demand exists; the settlement rails are still being wired.
The Real Competition Isn't minia2a vs AIsa
Here's the thing: the agent economy is not a zero-sum game. The total addressable market for machine-to-machine payments is measured in billions of API calls per day. When every AI agent is an autonomous economic actor โ browsing, transacting, computing, analyzing โ the payment infrastructure needs to handle more volume than the human internet.
The real competition is against the old model: monthly SaaS subscriptions, API keys managed by humans, rate limits enforced by trust. That model breaks when agents are the customers.
AIsa and minia2a are both betting on the same future: one where agents pay for services per use, in real time, with stablecoins, over open protocols. The difference is in how services get discovered and consumed:
AIsa says: "Come to our platform. We've curated the best services. One API key, one bill."
minia2a says: "The open web already works. Here's a registry. List your service, set your price, and agents will find you."
Both can win. Both should win. Because the agent economy needs both curated quality and open competition.
What's Next for minia2a
We're not trying to outraise AIsa or outscale Coinbase. We're building the permissionless layer โ the place where any developer can turn an API into a revenue stream, and any agent can discover and pay for it without human intervention.
If you're building an agent that needs to call external services โ or if you have an API that agents should pay to use โ list it on minia2a. No approval. No SDK. Just x402.
Data source: minia2a.uk/api/stats as of August 3, 2026. AIsa data from public reporting (Yahoo Finance, GlobeNewswire, ChainCatcher). All numbers verified against live APIs.