NEW YORK — Financial technology company Mercury is giving artificial intelligence agents their own corporate payment cards, allowing businesses to authorize AI systems to make purchases without requiring a person to approve each transaction, according to reporting by Fast Company.
The new Agent Cards, offered through Mercury Spend, function much like corporate cards issued to employees but include controls intended specifically for autonomous AI systems.
A human employee must create the virtual card and can establish its budget, approved merchants and permitted spending categories. An AI agent can then use the card to make purchases from beginning to end without obtaining individual transaction approvals, the report stated.
Purchases falling outside the company’s predetermined rules are automatically declined, and an AI agent cannot increase its own spending limit, Fast Company reported.
Separate Audit Trail
The cards also create a separate audit trail for an agent’s transactions, allowing companies to distinguish AI-generated spending from purchases made by employees.
“People have already been manually issuing our virtual cards to agents,” Mercury co-founder and CEO Immad Akhund told Fast Company.
Akhund said the new system formalizes that practice while providing businesses with additional controls, including the ability to audit spending conducted by AI agents.
Mercury said more than 300,000 entrepreneurs use its financial platform, which generates more than $650 million in annualized revenue, according to Fast Company.
AI Moves From Reviewing Expenses to Making Purchases
The introduction of dedicated AI payment cards represents another step in companies’ use of artificial intelligence to automate financial operations.
More than half of businesses, 52%, already use AI for some portion of their expense-management processes, according to an American Express Trendex survey cited by PYMNTS. Fraud detection and receipt capture are among the most common uses. Another 40% of businesses said they plan to use AI in expense management.
Fast Co.’s analysis suggested agent cards potentially move AI beyond monitoring, processing or reviewing expenses after transactions occur by allowing an AI system to initiate and complete purchases itself.
The distinction also creates a new category of corporate cardholder.
Unlike employees, AI agents cannot seek exceptions or explain unusual transactions. Under Mercury’s system, an agent either has authority to complete a transaction under the rules established for its card or the purchase is declined, according to the Fast Co. report/
That gives AI agents narrower financial autonomy than employees in some respects. A human cardholder could ask a supervisor to increase a spending limit or approve an exception, while Mercury’s AI agent cannot change the restrictions placed on its card.
Ramp Also Developing Agent Payments
Mercury is not alone in developing payment capabilities for autonomous AI.
Ramp is issuing scoped virtual cards through its partnership with Visa that outside AI agents can use under spending policies established by businesses, according to Fast Company.
Ramp also introduced AI Token Spend Management in July, allowing businesses to monitor spending on AI subscriptions and application programming interface usage.
That addresses a different type of AI expense. Rather than giving an AI agent authority to make purchases, the product tracks how much businesses themselves are paying AI providers through subscriptions and usage-based charges, the report explained.
