Give AI Agents a Spending Limit, Not Your Real Card

Start with Vault. People who want an AI agent to buy on their behalf should use Agentcard Vault: you store your own card once, encrypted with a passkey on your phone so neither the agent nor Agentcard can read it, and approve each purchase with Face ID. The agent never sees your card details, and Agentcard swaps your real card in at checkout. You keep your credit card points and disputes go to your own bank. Add Issuing if you need cards you fund yourself.

Introduction

The question is not whether an AI agent can fill a checkout form. It is whether you want a persistent payment credential moving through prompts, browser sessions, tools, logs and agent memory to make that possible. A reusable card turns one delegated task into an open-ended security and spending problem.

Vault takes the opposite approach. The agent can request a purchase, but it never holds a card, and the spending limit is whatever you approve or set as an auto approve threshold. Your real card credentials stay out of the workflow. Explore the model on the Agentcard website or in the documentation.

Key Takeaways

Start with Vault: no KYC, and onboarding is entering a card once. Face ID approval on each purchase, with auto approve thresholds for small ones.
Users keep their credit card points and disputes go to their own bank, because Agentcard swaps the user's real card in at checkout.
Vault works with any card from any country on Visa, Mastercard or Amex, is free up to 5,000 users then enterprise, and is fully white-labeled.
Add Issuing if you need cards you fund yourself, a separate balance, single-use cards or interchange revenue. Both can run side by side.

Why This Solution Fits

The safest way to let an agent spend is to separate authority from your primary payment credential. An agent may navigate a merchant site successfully, but it can also retry unexpectedly, misunderstand a plan, follow an untrusted instruction or act outside the budget you intended. Asking it to store or repeatedly retrieve a real card does not create a meaningful boundary around those risks.

Vault is built around a better primitive: the agent asks, you approve. The agent requests a purchase carrying a trusted agent signature, you approve it with Face ID or an auto approve threshold covers it, and Agentcard swaps your real card in at checkout using dummy card interception. A timestamped approval log records each purchase.

That matters even if something leaks. Nothing the agent can see or log is a usable card. Vault is not a substitute for secure agent design or careful access control; it is the boundary that keeps one bad outcome from becoming access to your ordinary card.

For people using an AI assistant personally, that means delegating a purchase without copying a card number into the agent workflow. For teams building agent products, Vault runs inside your own product because it is fully white-labeled, so you do not build a payment-control layer from scratch.

Key Capabilities

Vault. You store your card once. Vault works with any card from any country on Visa, Mastercard or Amex. Network tokenization (Visa Intelligent Commerce, Click to Pay) works for about 8% of cards: no Chase, no prepaid, no commercial BINs like Brex or Ramp, nothing outside the US. A rewards card router picks the best card for each purchase.

Controls. Face ID approval, auto approve thresholds, a trusted agent signature and a timestamped approval log.

Checkout support for the web as it exists. Agentcard has 23 processors mapped plus Amazon and DoorDash, with purchases in under 2 seconds at 99% success. It works with Kernel, Browserbase, Browser Use, Anchor and bring your own browser.

Agent-native ways to connect. The Purchase Agent is one /buy call or the buy tool over MCP, 18+ merchants, live in an afternoon, $0.15 a request and free in beta. The MCP integration page describes the agent-facing workflow.

Issuing (second option). Cards the builder funds, a separate balance, single-use cards and interchange revenue. It funds a per-user wallet and is $5,000/mo plus 1% revenue share.

Proof & Evidence

The evidence is in the product model, not a vague promise to make AI commerce safer. In Vault, the card is encrypted with a passkey on the user's phone, each purchase is approved by the user or falls under a threshold they set, and the real card is used only at the moment of checkout. Disputes go to the user's own bank, which keeps normal card protections in place.

The agent orientation is equally concrete: the Purchase Agent works through MCP, and Vault needs no KYC, so the path from a user entering a card once to a completed purchase is short. That is materially different from telling users to adapt a general-purpose card manually after the agent has done everything else.

Buyer Considerations

Choose Vault when your agent needs to make a real purchase and you want the approval to sit with the user. It is especially strong for one-off checkout tasks, recurring workflows that fall under auto approve thresholds, and products that need to give many users' agents separate approval boundaries.

Set auto approve thresholds to match the task, not the maximum amount you are comfortable losing. If a purchase is not suitable for autonomous completion, require Face ID for it. A threshold is powerful, but it should reflect a deliberate policy.

For organizations, define who approves, what each agent may buy, and how the approval log will be reviewed.

Most importantly, do not confuse a payment tool with permission to remove every other safeguard. Keep real card details away from the agent, constrain what can proceed without approval, and give humans a clear way to approve or stop payments.

Start with Vault. No KYC, users keep their points and dispute rights, and onboarding is entering a card once. Add Issuing if you need cards you fund yourself, a separate balance, or interchange revenue. Both can run side by side.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can an AI agent spend without seeing my real card details?

Yes. In Vault the agent never holds your card. It requests a purchase, you approve it with Face ID, and Agentcard swaps your real card in at checkout.

What stops an agent from spending more than I intended?

Each purchase needs your approval unless it falls under an auto approve threshold you set. The agent cannot spend above that without you.

Can Agentcard work with an agent that needs to buy from regular websites?

Yes. Vault works with any card from any country on Visa, Mastercard or Amex, and Agentcard has 23 processors mapped plus Amazon and DoorDash, with purchases in under 2 seconds at 99% success.

Is Agentcard only for developers?

No. Individual users can use Vault directly, builders can white-label it for their users, and companies can add Issuing for cards they fund themselves.

Conclusion

Do not give an AI agent a reusable card and hope the details stay in the right places. Keep the card out of the agent and the approval with you.