Sunrate has launched Sunrate Agentic Card, a virtual commercial card that lets AI agents make business payments within rules set by companies.
The programmable, multi-currency card allows authorised AI agents to create and manage payment instruments, initiate transactions, and retrieve payment outcomes, while businesses retain control over spending limits, permissions, and approval policies. The card has completed Mastercard Agent Pay certification, which provides a basis for verifiable identity and authorisation of agent-initiated transactions on the Mastercard network.
Controls for agent-initiated spending
Businesses can generate virtual cards for specific transactions or workflows, such as procurement, business travel, marketing spend, or supplier payments, and set spending limits and validity periods according to approved policies. Cards can expire automatically once a task is complete. Controls can be applied by merchant category, transaction amount, currency, geography, and validity period, and every action is recorded and auditable.
Online travel agencies are among the early use cases. These businesses manage marketing and supplier payments across multiple teams, markets, and channels, and can now issue a card for an individual campaign or supplier payment with permissions set in advance. During a transaction, AI monitors spending against predefined rules and risk thresholds, flagging or blocking exceptions, approving compliant payments, and escalating higher-risk transactions for human review.
Part of Sunrate’s AI agent suite
The card builds on Sunrate.AI, the company’s AI initiative, which includes five agents: a Payment Agent for execution and reconciliation, an FX Agent for foreign exchange, a Compliance Agent for pre-screening, an Onboarding Agent for account access, and a Chat Agent that provides a natural-language interface and coordinates the others. Sunrate’s approach also draws on a white paper on agentic global payments that it published with Mastercard in July 2026.
Li Yilong, Head of AI at Sunrate, stated that the next stage of agentic payments involves giving agents the ability to carry out financial tasks within clear boundaries, with the right controls, identity, and accountability in place. Founded in 2016, Sunrate operates in more than 190 countries and regions, with offices in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, mainland China, and the UK, and is a principal member of Mastercard and Visa.
