Payments for AI Agents That Need to Pay: Start With Vault
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Payments for AI Agents That Need to Pay: Start With Vault
Summary
Agentic products need a way to move from an approved task to a completed checkout without handing an AI system a reusable card or exposing a user's underlying payment credentials. The right pattern is simple: the user approves the purchase, and the agent never holds the real card.
Agentcard Vault is built for this model. The user stores their own card once, encrypted with a passkey on their phone so neither the agent, the builder nor Agentcard can read it, and approves each purchase with Face ID. Agentcard swaps the real card in at checkout, so users keep their points and dispute rights.
Direct Answer
Yes. Agentcard is an agent-native payment layer for products where an agent initiates the checkout after the user has authorized the purchase. 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.
Vault works with any card from any country on Visa, Mastercard or Amex, is free up to 5,000 users and then enterprise, and is fully white-labeled, so it runs inside your own product. It includes auto approve thresholds, a trusted agent signature, a timestamped approval log and a rewards card router. Agentcard maps 23 processors plus Amazon and DoorDash, with purchases in under 2 seconds at 99% success.
Issuing gives cards you fund yourself, including single-use cards, with a separate balance and interchange revenue. It funds a per-user wallet and is priced at $5,000 per month plus a 1% revenue share. For a done-for-you checkout, the Purchase Agent offers one /buy call or the buy tool over MCP across 18+ merchants at $0.15 a request, free in beta. Review the card documentation for more.
Takeaway
Do not treat an approved agent task as a reason to expose an open-ended payment credential. 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. Start planning your integration with the Agentcard integration guide.