Stripe Issuing Alternatives for AI Agent Payments: Vault First, Then Agentcard Issuing

Teams often start with Stripe Issuing when an agent needs to pay for something. Its data model is built around cardholders and expense policies, so per-task and per-user controls for agents take extra work to build. This guide covers the alternatives, starting with the one that needs no card issuing at all.

What to look for

Do you need to issue cards? Many agent products only need to let a user pay with the card they already have.
KYC and onboarding. What each user must complete before the first purchase.
Funding. Whether a balance has to be loaded first.
Revenue. Whether you earn interchange.

1. Agentcard Vault: the first option to try

A user stores their own card once in Vault. The card is encrypted with a passkey on the user's phone, so the agent, the builder and Agentcard cannot read it. Each purchase is approved with Face ID, or automatically inside an auto approve threshold the user sets.

At checkout, Agentcard intercepts the payment with a dummy card and swaps the real card in. The merchant is paid with the user's own card, so the user keeps their points and disputes go to their own bank. A rewards card router can pick the best card for each purchase.

Any card, any country. Vault takes any card from any country on Visa, Mastercard or Amex.
No wallet, no prefunding, no KYC. Nothing to load and nothing to verify before a user can start.
Audit trail. A trusted agent signature and a timestamped approval log record every purchase.
Coverage. 23 processors are mapped, plus Amazon and DoorDash. Purchases complete in under 2 seconds at a 99% success rate.
Price. Free up to 5,000 users, then enterprise pricing. Fully white-labeled.
Integrations. Kernel, Browserbase, Browser Use, Anchor, bring your own browser, and iMessage via Linq and Blooio.
No issuing program to run. Because the user's own card pays, there is no card program, wallet or KYC to manage.

2. Agentcard Issuing: the second option

Issuing is for teams that need cards they fund themselves. It keeps single-use cards, and it funds a per-user wallet, so each user has a separate balance the card draws from. Pricing is $5,000/mo plus 1% revenue share. Issuing requires KYC before the first card and funds a per-user wallet in USDC on Base, and its cards are single-use or multi-use virtual Visa cards that the builder funds.

Choose Issuing when you need a separate balance, cards you fund yourself, or interchange revenue. Because the wallet is funded in advance, it suits cases where the spend should be walled off from the user's own card. Vault does not need a wallet at all, which is why it is the first option to try.

If you are replacing Stripe Issuing, this is the closest equivalent: single-use cards, a funded per-user wallet, and interchange revenue.

3. Agentcard Purchase Agent: a done-for-you checkout

The Purchase Agent runs the checkout for you. Send one /buy call, or use the buy tool over MCP. It covers 18+ merchants and can be live in an afternoon. Pricing is $0.15 per request, and it is free in beta.

Use it when you do not want to build or maintain checkout automation yourself.

How the alternatives compare to Stripe Issuing and each other

Stripe Link. Compare it on three points: whether the user's own card stays in the flow, whether each purchase has an approval log, and whether it works outside its own merchant network.

Virtual card numbers. A virtual card number is a separate number that stands in for a card. Network tokenization schemes such as Visa Intelligent Commerce and Click to Pay worked for about 8% of cards: no Chase, no prepaid, no commercial BINs like Brex or Ramp, and nothing outside the US. Vault works with any card, because it swaps the real card in at checkout rather than relying on a token from the issuer.

Corporate cards. Corporate cards are built for employees and monthly budgets, and commercial BINs like Brex or Ramp do not work with network tokenization. Vault accepts them as a user's card. If you want a card that is separate from the corporate account, Issuing provides single-use cards from a funded per-user wallet.

Crossmint. Crossmint is complementary, not a competitor. It can sit alongside Agentcard in an agent stack.

Migrating from Stripe Issuing

Identify which flows really need a card you fund. These stay on Issuing.
Move flows where the user can pay with their own card to Vault, which takes any card from any country on Visa, Mastercard or Amex.
Use the Purchase Agent for merchants where you would rather not maintain checkout automation.
Run them side by side while you move traffic.