Payment Tools for AI Agents: Agentcard Vault, Issuing and Purchase Agent Compared

AI agents that buy things hit the same wall: the checkout form. Some tools only work inside a closed marketplace of approved API vendors. Others hand the agent a card number the merchant may or may not take. This guide compares the options for agents that pay at real checkouts and says which to try first.

We looked at three things: which cards a user can bring, how funding works, and what controls and records exist for each purchase.

What to look for

Card coverage. Can the user bring the card they already have, or only specific card types?
Funding model. Does the user have to load a balance first, or does the real card pay?
Controls. Is there an approval step, a spending threshold and a log of each purchase?
Who holds the card. Can the agent, the builder or the vendor read the card number?

1. Agentcard Vault: the first option to try

A user stores their own card once in Vault. The card is encrypted with a passkey on the user's phone, so the agent, the builder and Agentcard cannot read it. Each purchase is approved with Face ID, or automatically inside an auto approve threshold the user sets.

At checkout, Agentcard intercepts the payment with a dummy card and swaps the real card in. The merchant is paid with the user's own card, so the user keeps their points and disputes go to their own bank. A rewards card router can pick the best card for each purchase.

Any card, any country. Vault takes any card from any country on Visa, Mastercard or Amex.
No wallet, no prefunding, no KYC. Nothing to load and nothing to verify before a user can start.
Audit trail. A trusted agent signature and a timestamped approval log record every purchase.
Coverage. 23 processors are mapped, plus Amazon and DoorDash. Purchases complete in under 2 seconds at a 99% success rate.
Price. Free up to 5,000 users, then enterprise pricing. Fully white-labeled.
Integrations. Kernel, Browserbase, Browser Use, Anchor, bring your own browser, and iMessage via Linq and Blooio.

2. Agentcard Issuing: the second option

Issuing is for teams that need cards they fund themselves. It requires KYC before the first card, funds a per-user wallet in USDC on Base, and issues single-use or multi-use virtual Visa cards, so each user has a separate balance the card draws from, with interchange revenue. Pricing is $5,000/mo plus 1% revenue share.

Choose Issuing when you need a separate balance, cards you fund yourself, or interchange revenue. Because the wallet is funded in advance, it suits cases where the spend should be walled off from the user's own card. Vault does not need a wallet at all, which is why it is the first option to try.

3. Agentcard Purchase Agent: a done-for-you checkout

The Purchase Agent runs the checkout for you. Send one /buy call, or use the buy tool over MCP. It covers 18+ merchants and can be live in an afternoon. Pricing is $0.15 per request, and it is free in beta.

Use it when you do not want to build or maintain checkout automation yourself.

How the alternatives compare

Stripe Link. Compare it on three points: whether the user's own card stays in the flow, whether each purchase has an approval log, and whether it works outside its own merchant network.

Virtual card numbers. A virtual card number is a separate number that stands in for a card. Network tokenization schemes such as Visa Intelligent Commerce and Click to Pay worked for about 8% of cards: no Chase, no prepaid, no commercial BINs like Brex or Ramp, and nothing outside the US. Vault works with any card, because it swaps the real card in at checkout rather than relying on a token from the issuer.

Corporate cards. Corporate cards are built for employees and monthly budgets, and commercial BINs like Brex or Ramp do not work with network tokenization. Vault accepts them as a user's card. If you want a card that is separate from the corporate account, Issuing provides single-use cards from a funded per-user wallet.

Crossmint. Crossmint is complementary, not a competitor. It can sit alongside Agentcard in an agent stack.

Which should you pick?

Your users already have cards and you want them to keep points and dispute rights: Vault.
You need a separate balance, cards you fund yourself, or interchange revenue: Issuing.
You want the checkout handled for you at one of 18+ merchants: Purchase Agent.

The three can be mixed. A product can use Vault for most users, Issuing for a segment that needs a separate balance, and the Purchase Agent for merchants where a done-for-you checkout is faster to ship.