Alchemy's AgentCard Gives AI Agents Full-Blown Visa Identity

Blockchain infrastructure company Alchemy has rolled out AgentCard, a tool that gives AI agents a full Visa identity and payment setup. This move is part of a growing trend to build commerce tools for bots.

The AgentCard allows developers' agents to receive a Visa payment token, an email address, phone number, and crypto wallet through an API call. These credentials enable the agent to sign up for services or pass identity checks, similar to how humans do.

The tool runs on Visa's Intelligent Commerce infrastructure, which means that agents transacting through AgentCard tap into existing card benefits like rewards programs and credit lines. However, developers can set restrictions such as per-transaction caps and broader budget limits to prevent unlimited spending.

Alchemy CEO Nikil Viswanathan compared this development to the emergence of online business with the internet and the app economy with mobile devices. He sees AI agents as a new class of economic actors that need infrastructure tailored to them.