Blockchain infrastructure company Alchemy has released a virtual card called AgentCard, designed for the autonomous operation of AI agents in the real world. The product is built on Visa's suite of payment solutions for AI commerce, combining a payment tool with an identity system so that agents can act on their own.
Setup runs through a single API: the user gets a Visa payment token for their bot, along with a separate email address, phone number, and crypto wallet. AgentCard supports tokenized card payments, cryptocurrency where the merchant accepts it, and the new agentic payment protocols — x402 from Coinbase and the Machine Payments Protocol from Stripe.
The developers explain that by default the system uses Visa tokens, but it switches to crypto or agentic protocols wherever those are available. As the number of connected merchants and networks grows, AgentCard updates the payment route on its own without any reconfiguration. The card also comes with built-in spending controls: merchant restrictions, per-transaction limits, and budgets.
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