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Alex Obchakevich
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Alex Obchakevich
May 19, 2026
•
5
min read
Table of contents
Uncontrolled AI Agent Spend 2025+ (Forecast)
Adoption of Corporate Cards by AI Agents
✓
The agent-based payments market is evolving from a simple concept into a fully operational infrastructure that is already in use.
According to Artemis, in April - May 2026, the daily transaction volume via the x402 and Machine Payments Protocol reached 150k–200k transactions per day, with peaks of up to 230k.
The volume in dollars stabilized at $60 - 80k per day following a volatile March, when the peak reached.
Total Agentic Payments Transactions
PERIOD3M ▾
Transactions
250K
200K
150K
100K
50K
0
Mar 8
Mar 26
Apr 12
Apr 30
Machine Payments Protocol
x402
Total Agentic Payments Volume
PERIOD3M ▾
Volume
$300K
$250K
$200K
$150K
$100K
$50K
$0
Mar 8
Mar 26
Apr 12
Apr 30
Machine Payments Protocol
x402
This is no longer a test; it is a fully operational reality.
The dynamics of the agent market itself confirm the scale of this shift.
In 2025, there were 8m active agents, of whom only ~600k processed any payments, while the Card Agents segment numbered ~100k.
By Q1 2026, the total number of agents had grown to ~20m, payment agents numbered ~3m, and Card Agents had reached ~400k.
In other words: in just one quarter, the number of agents using cards for payments quadrupled.
Spend leakage
Forecast
USD Billions
$0B
$0.5B
$1B
$1.5B
$2B
$2.5B
$3B
$3.5B
$4B
~$0.3B · Spend leakage
~$1.5B · Forecast
~$4B · Forecast
2025
2026
2027
Source: Agentmarketcap, Oobit Research, Obchakevich Research
The problem no one wants to admit out loud
While most people focus on analytics, most companies face the same problem. Agents are given access to a shared corporate card, a hastily issued virtual card, or the most common (and worst) option - the founder’s personal card, hardcoded into a configuration file.
The result is predictable: no control over expense categories, no audit, no policy enforcement. An agent could deploy a cloud infrastructure at 3 a.m. for an amount that no one authorized, and they’d only find out about it the following month from the statement.
Paying agents
Card agents
Millions of agents
0M
0.5M
1M
1.5M
2M
2.5M
3M
~0.5M paying agents
~0.05M card agents
~3M paying agents
~0.35M card agents
2025
Q1 2026
Source: Agentmarketcap, Oobit Research, Obchakevich Research
According to Agentmarketcap, AI agents spent over $400m uncontrollably in 2025, and this trend is already on the rise in 2026 and could reach . Therefore, this problem extends beyond the corporate card market.
Agent Cards: a card built for code, not for people
That’s why Oobit launched Agent Cards - the first corporate card designed natively for software. The product’s architecture addresses a specific operational challenge: each agent receives their own Visa card, funded directly from the company’s USDT treasury.
Spending limits, permitted merchant categories, and hard caps are enforced at the server level - with no possibility of circumvention by either an agent or a human.
If a transaction violates the rules, it is rejected before reaching the merchant and logged in real time with a human-readable reason.
Setup takes less than three minutes after KYB verification. The product integrates with LangChain, OpenAI Assistants, Claude, CrewAI, Mastra, and any framework via API.
The same treasury and the same dashboard serve both human employees via Corporate Cards and agents via Agent Cards.
Agentic payments aren’t the future - they’re here in Q2 2026. The question isn’t whether agents will spend money, but what infrastructure will support it.
Oobit’s Agent Cards represent the payment industry’s first attempt to answer that question.
On the consumer side, personal agents can already pay with crypto too: here's how Grok payments with crypto and Meta Muse AI agent payments work with Oobit.
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Open your treasury, hold dollars, and start paying the world.
Abre tu tesorería, guarda dólares y empieza a pagarle al mundo.
Abra seu tesouro, guarde dólares e comece a pagar o mundo.
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