Corporate card platforms become the policy layer for business agents' spending

Both product ideas are already shipping. Per-agent and per-task virtual cards come from Corpay, Mercury, Meow, Stripe Issuing (including single-use Link cards) and Lithic. Ramp already holds the finance-team customer, the policy engine and Visa agent integrations, so its own version would likely be a feature, not a big build. Onchain wallets with key-level policy are covered by Coinbase Agentic Wallets, Turnkey's policy engine, Crossmint, and open session-key standards like ERC-7715 used by ZeroDev and Polygon. A generic agent card or a generic policy wallet would be a commodity entering a market led by incumbents. The remaining room looks narrower. One opening is the purpose record and the audit layer: tying each card or key to the agent's task, its intent, the approving human and the resulting receipt. That record would then flow into ERP and expense systems and work across several card issuers and wallets. Most issuers stop at authorization controls and leave this reconciliation and accountability work to the customer. A second opening is a neutral policy layer that sits above many issuers and chains, so a company running agents on Stripe, Lithic, Ramp and an onchain wallet can define one policy. A third is vertical depth, such as procurement or travel agents with negotiated-rate and supplier-compliance checks. Any of these has to be sold as an add-on to the incumbents, not a replacement, and Ramp or Brex could absorb them quickly.

• Corpay Agent Card

  Announced July 2026. An AI agent can generate a virtual card for an approved business transaction, and the company sets and enforces the spend rules. This is close to the per-task card idea, coming from an established corporate payments company.

• Mercury Agent Cards

  Businesses create Agent Cards that an AI agent uses on its own, with budget, merchant and category controls. Out-of-policy transactions are declined automatically, and the agent cannot raise its own limit.

• Meow

  Business banking provider selling virtual cards issued per agent, with custom spend controls and per-agent API keys. The details come from its own marketing pages.

• Stripe Issuing for agents / Link agent wallet

  Virtual cards for agent purchases, with limits set before each purchase and real-time authorization decisions. A review says it is in private preview. Through Cross River, Link also issues single-use cards scoped to one transaction.

• Lithic agentic commerce

  Card-issuing infrastructure that can lock virtual cards to one merchant, a time window and an amount, plus contextual authorization controls. It is a building block that new entrants would likely build on.

• Ramp (Visa Intelligent Commerce, procurement agents)

  Expanded its Visa partnership in March 2026 to cover Intelligent Commerce and the Trusted Agent Protocol for agent bill pay, and launched procurement agents in April 2026. It already owns the policy engine and the finance-team customer.

• Coinbase Agentic Wallets

  Agents hold and spend stablecoins on Base without ever touching private keys. Has per-session and per-transaction caps plus transaction-risk (KYT) screening.

• Turnkey policy engine

  Policies are checked inside a secure enclave on every signing request. They can restrict an agent's key by recipient, contract, function, chain and value. This is key-level policy enforcement.

• Crossmint Agent Wallets

  Dual-key smart wallets where the agent's key sits inside a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE). Covers stablecoin wallets and scoped card permissions for agents.

• ZeroDev Kernel / Polygon agentic wallets

  Smart accounts that use session keys with spend caps, allowlists and expiry, built on ERC-4337 and ERC-7715. Already standardized open infrastructure.

Checked 2026-10-16