MoonPay Launches Virtual Debit Card Letting AI Agents Spend Stablecoins at Mastercard Merchants

MoonPay Launches Debit Mastercard That Lets AI Agents Pay With Stablecoins - Decrypt

Currently live in the U.K. and Latin America, the card will expand to the U.S. and EU in the coming months, requiring identity verification to issue. Crypto payments provider MoonPay announced Friday that it has created a virtual debit card allowing AI agents -- autonomous software programs that can act on behalf of users -- to make purchases using stablecoins at any online merchant that accepts Mastercard. The product, called the MoonAgents Card, converts crypto to fiat currency at the point of purchase, removing a step that can impede the move from decentralized finance to everyday commerce. (Disclaimer: MoonPay Ventures is an investor in Dastan, parent company of an editorially independent Decrypt.) "Agents are already managing wallets, executing trades, and moving value on-chain," said MoonPay founder and CEO Ivan Soto-Wright, in a statement. "The one thing they couldn't do was spend at a merchant. Now they can." The card is being launched through a partnership with Monavate, a regulated payments infrastructure provider, and Exodus, a self-custody wallet company. The announcement reflects a broader push by fintech companies to build financial plumbing suited for a future in which AI systems, not just humans, are initiating and completing transactions. Unlike some competing products that require users to pre-load funds into a custodial account before spending, MoonAgents Card allows agents to spend directly from an on-chain wallet at the moment of the transaction. Wallet custody is never transferred, and users can revoke agent access at any time. "AI agents are going to transact constantly, at machine speed, across millions of merchants. Exodus has spent a decade building self-custodial wallets for people," said Exodus co-founder and CEO JP Richardson, in a statement. "MoonAgents Card extends that infrastructure to agents, letting them spend directly from an on-chain wallet. The wallets and cards that work for that future look nothing like what exists today -- and we're building for that future." The company said momentum around its developer tools has been significant. MoonPay CLI, the command-line interface underpinning the product, has processed more than 4 million tool calls since launch -- with the first million taking 30 days and the second million taking just seven. The card is currently available in the United Kingdom and Latin America, with expansion to the United States and European Union planned in the coming months. Identity verification is required before a card can be issued.

MoonPay Rolls Out Agent-Ready Stablecoin Card on Mastercard Network

The card links self-custodied wallets to Mastercard rails, allowing AI agents to spend stablecoins at checkout without preloading funds or moving assets offchain. MoonPay is launching a virtual debit card that allows users and AI agents to spend stablecoins directly from self-custodied onchain wallets at merchants that accept Mastercard, using real-time crypto-to-fiat conversion at checkout. The card, developed with Monavate and Exodus Movement, Inc., connects onchain wallets to traditional card rails, enabling transactions without preloading funds or transferring assets offchain, with smart contracts authorizing spending at the point of purchase. Available through MoonPay's CLI and agent workflows to users in the UK and Latin America, the card is designed for programmatic use, allowing users to delegate spending permissions to AI agents, with identity verification required before issuance, the company said. The system converts stablecoins to fiat at the moment of purchase while maintaining user custody, with funds accessed only when a transaction is authorized and returned immediately if a payment is declined. MoonPay, founded in 2019 and based in Miami, is a financial technology company that provides payment infrastructure for moving funds between fiat and digital assets. The card builds on the company's broader push into AI-driven payments infrastructure. In March, MoonPay released an open-source wallet standard designed to let AI agents hold funds and execute transactions across blockchains from a single wallet. Related: How AI agents can reshape arbitrage in prediction markets The launch comes as crypto, technology and payments companies ramp up efforts to build infrastructure for AI-driven transactions. Coinbase introduced its x402 standard for stablecoin payments over HTTP in 2025, enabling applications and AI agents to pay for services programmatically. Recently, the company updated the protocol to support usage-based pricing, allowing payments to scale with compute demand such as data queries and AI processing. In March, Tempo, a blochain backed by payments company Stripe, launched its mainnet alongside a Machine Payments Protocol designed to support agent-driven transactions across payment methods. In a post on X, the project said "agent payments will soon overtake human payments on the internet." Source: Tempo More recently, crypto exchange OKX unveiled a protocol supporting agent-to-agent payments, recurring flows and escrow-based settlements across blockchains, allowing software agents to execute more complex financial transactions without human input. Elsewhere, non-crypto companies are working to connect AI agents with existing payment systems. Google announced its Agent Payments Protocol in September 2025, designed to support transactions across cards, bank transfers and stablecoins. Visa has also released a command-line tool aimed at enabling programmatic payments by AI agents, allowing developers to initiate transactions directly through code.