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Oobit Launches Visa Cards for AI Agents, Funded Directly from USDT Treasuries

Tether-backed payments startup Oobit released Agent Cards on April 30, giving businesses a way to issue individual Visa cards to AI software agents and fund them from corporate USDT holdings, with no human sign-off required per transaction.

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The product targets companies already running AI agents to handle tasks like cloud procurement, SaaS subscriptions, or vendor payments. Each card is programmable: finance teams set merchant category restrictions, spend limits, and hard caps enforced at the transaction layer with no override possible. Every charge is logged in Oobit's dashboard alongside a human-readable reasoning for approval or decline. Oobit says setup takes three minutes and the cards work with any AI agent framework.

Access is restricted to KYB-verified companies (Know Your Business, the corporate equivalent of identity verification). Oobit is currently onboarding a founding group of production-stage businesses, with limited availability through Q2 2026.

"Agent Cards is the first time someone has asked the actual question," said Oobit CEO Amram Adar. "If you were designing a corporate card from scratch in 2026, knowing the cardholder was going to be software, what would it look like?"


USDT as the Settlement Layer

Cards draw from a company's USDT treasury directly, bypassing the banking delays and foreign exchange overhead that slow down traditional corporate card products. USDT's circulating supply has recently exceeded $140 billion, making it the dominant stablecoin by both issuance and liquidity. On Oobit's own platform, approximately 72 percent of transactions were conducted in USDT, illustrating the currency's practical dominance at the transaction level.

Oobit's network covers 150 million merchants across more than 100 countries, which means agents can spend at most online and physical merchants that accept Visa.

Tether, which led Oobit's $25 million Series A, has been explicit about where this is heading. The company has built out a portfolio of AI and autonomous payments infrastructure alongside its stablecoin operations.

"When AI agents will be everywhere, there will be the need of trillions of payments per day," Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said in remarks published by CapitalAI Daily. "And the current financial transport layers are not going to be able to cope with that."

Tether's broader positioning includes an open-source Wallet Development Kit supporting agent wallet creation across Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and several other chains, alongside a new self-custodial mobile wallet (tether.wallet) and the QVAC SDK for autonomous machine applications.


A Crowded but Nascent Market

Oobit is not alone in this space. Visa launched its Intelligent Commerce Connect platform in April 2026, a developer suite letting AI agents initiate payments using tokenized card credentials, with more than 30 partners currently building in its sandbox.

Mastercard partnered with Crossmint on agent card payments. Separately, Mastercard and Santander completed what they described as Europe's first live end-to-end payment executed by an AI agent, in early 2026. Ramp and Visa are separately building scoped virtual cards for AI-driven corporate bill pay. Lobster.cash has also partnered with Mastercard to enable agent card purchases, underscoring the breadth of activity across both crypto-native and traditional finance players.

Analysts note that Oobit's differentiation lies in its USDT-native settlement and crypto-first infrastructure, a meaningful distinction for businesses already holding stablecoin treasuries rather than routing through traditional banking rails.


Regional Stakes: Africa and South Asia

The product's potential reach is uneven across markets where USDT adoption is highest.

In Africa, stablecoins account for 43 percent of all crypto transactions, and Sub-Saharan Africa records the world's highest stablecoin adoption rate at 9.3 percent of the population. According to BVNK data, 79 percent of crypto-active African users hold stablecoins, the highest share of any region globally. Nigeria alone accounts for 40 percent of the continent's stablecoin inflows, with roughly 25.9 million users. Average remittance fees in the region run 7.9 percent on a $200 transfer, well above the global average, and corporate cross-border payment costs are similarly elevated, which makes stablecoin settlement a practical cost argument rather than a speculative one.

Oobit is currently live in South Africa but has not confirmed availability in Nigeria, Kenya, or other high-adoption Sub-Saharan markets. Oobit did not respond to a request for comment on additional African market availability, and KYB eligibility for businesses in those jurisdictions has not been confirmed.

South Asia is the fastest-growing crypto region globally. India ranked first worldwide for overall crypto adoption in 2025, and regional transaction volume reached approximately $300 billion through mid-2025.

For tech companies in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh running AI-driven workflows in software development or content production, a USDT-funded agent card with Visa acceptance solves a real operational problem. However, India lacks a comprehensive crypto payments regulatory framework, and Pakistan's new virtual assets authority (PVARA) is still being established. Pakistan took a precursor step in March 2025 with the formation of the Pakistan Crypto Council, but the broader regulatory framework remains in flux, creating compliance uncertainty for businesses in those jurisdictions attempting KYB onboarding with Oobit. Geographic eligibility for South Asian businesses has not been confirmed directly with Oobit, and prospective users should verify their eligibility before assuming access.


What Comes Next

Agent Cards enters the market at a moment when the infrastructure race for autonomous payments is accelerating across both crypto-native and traditional finance. Whether Oobit can extend its founding-group rollout into a broader product before larger incumbents consolidate the category will depend on how quickly it can expand geographic eligibility and navigate the patchwork of regulatory frameworks in its target markets.