Explainer · TIER_B
What is MCP?
A standard way for models to list and call tools. It is not itself a payment protocol.
zFinia published 7 September 2026
The Model Context Protocol, open-sourced by Anthropic on 25 November 2024, defines how a host (the model runtime) talks to servers that expose tools, resources and prompts.
MCP solved a proliferation of one-off integrations. It did not solve billing. tools/list and tools/call tell an agent what it can do, not what it owes.
Paid MCP is an overlay
Cloudflare’s gateway, x402 challenge-handoff and MPP all propose to hang payment on the same tool call. Until the MCP spec itself names a payment profile, “paid MCP” remains a market category, not a single standard.
zFinia covers that category because developers keep asking how to monetize MCP. Questions are buyer-hand-raises. Proven demand still requires payments, not comments.