Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
It was only a matter of time before agentic commerce included transactions performed with digital currency. Early Friday, the 7-year-old New York City-based cryptocurrency platform MoonPay announced the launch of MoonAgents Card, a Mastercard that holders as well as AI agents can use to spend stablecoins at any e-commerce merchant that accepts Mastercard.
The venture, which includes card-issuing capability from the United Kingdom-based technology firm Monavate, lets users of the card spend directly from their onchain holdings, with a conversion to fiat currency at the time of the purchase.
MoonPay says its new debit card is different from existing cards linked to stablecoin assets in that participation by AI agents has been built into the product’s technology. This gives users the ability to spend—or give permission to agents to spend—assets from the wallet when the transaction is triggered, MoonPay says.
Transactions depend on a self-custodial wallet that the MoonAgents card connects to a Mastercard virtual card, MoonPay says. At the moment of the transaction, the user okays a so-called smart contract, which opens access to the user’s stablecoin balance. At that point, Monavate authorizes the card and takes care of the onchain funding in real time, according to MoonPay. A declined transaction results in funds going back to the wallet “immediately,” MoonPay says. The company claims more than 30 million users for its various services, as well as more than 500 corporate clients.
In a related move, San Francisco-based Slash Financial Inc., a banking platform, launched Global Cards, with support from Rain, a provider of card technology involving stablecoins. The Global Cards Visa card is aimed at businesses and looks to ease transactions involving the exchange of stablecoins, Slash says.
