TL;DR:
- Alchemy announced that its AgentCard now has access to the Visa network, allowing AI agents to make online purchases on behalf of users.
- The integration with Visa Intelligent Commerce enables transactions without creating new accounts, preserving existing rewards and credit lines.
- Each agent receives a dedicated email address and phone number, completing a functional identity layer equivalent to that of a human user.
Alchemy, the blockchain infrastructure firm, announced that artificial intelligence agents equipped with its AgentCard product now have full access to the Visa network, gaining complete identity and payment capabilities. The integration allows these agents to make online purchases on behalf of consumers — from booking a trip to renewing a subscription — without the user intervening at any step of the payment process.
Alchemy’s connection with Visa Intelligent Commerce enables agents to operate with tokens issued by Visa, which in turn preserves accumulated rewards, credit lines and card benefits without the need to create new accounts or credentials. AgentCard’s routing layer automatically selects the most suitable payment mechanism for each transaction. When native agent protocols are unavailable, the system falls back on single-use tokens as a backup mechanism.
AgentCard works with agents built on models from any provider, including OpenAI and Anthropic, extending its compatibility beyond a single closed ecosystem. This openness is crucial in a segment where Stripe, Visa and Mastercard compete to position themselves at the foundation of what the industry calls agentic commerce — a category still in early stages of adoption but gaining enormous momentum among leading financial and technology players.
Alchemy: Identity for Agents, the Missing Link
Beyond the payments component, each Alchemy agent provisioned through AgentCard receives an email address on the agentcard.email domain and a dedicated phone number. This identity layer allows agents to register for services, receive verifications and operate with the same functional credentials as a human user, resolving one of the main practical obstacles to the operational autonomy of AI systems.
Nikil Viswanathan, co-founder and CEO of Alchemy, argues that we are at a historic moment. “Every major computational shift has created a new type of economic actor,” he stated in a release. “The internet created online businesses. Mobile created the app economy. AI agents are next, and they need access to the global economy.”
