Alchemy's AgentCard gains Visa network access for AI transactions
In brief
- AgentCard now connects to Visa network, enabling AI agents to transact autonomously on behalf of consumers
- AI agents receive dedicated email addresses and phone numbers for identity verification and authentication
- Agents preserve existing rewards, credit lines, and card benefits via Visa-issued tokens
AI agents gain commercial autonomy
AgentCard works with agents built on models from any provider, including OpenAI or Anthropic. Each agent provisioned through the service receives a dedicated email address at agentcard.email and a new phone number, establishing a distinct identity for transaction verification and account recovery.
The routing layer underlying AgentCard selects the best available payment mechanism for each transaction. When agent-native protocols aren't supported, the system falls back to single-use tokens, ensuring transactions complete reliably across merchant ecosystems.
Preserving legacy financial infrastructure
A key feature of the Visa integration: AI agents can transact using Visa-issued tokens while preserving existing rewards, credit lines, and card benefits without creating new accounts. This design allows consumers to route agent activity through existing financial relationships rather than fragmenting identity across multiple payment systems.
Agent-native payment protocols remain in early adoption, though major payment networks are moving aggressively into this space. Stripe, Visa, and Mastercard are all driving infrastructure to support agentic commerce at scale.
"Every major computing shift has produced a new kind of economic actor. The internet created online businesses. Mobile created the app economy. AI agents are next, and they need to be able to access the global economy, and AgentCard is how that starts." — Nikil Viswanathan, co-founder and CEO of Alchemy
The integration reflects a broader shift: as AI agents become autonomous economic participants, payment networks and financial institutions are building systems to handle transactions initiated by software rather than human users.
