Hong Kong-based payment platform Sunrate has launched a programmable, multi-currency virtual commercial card that allows authorized artificial intelligence agents to execute business payments under predefined controls.
The company introduced the product at Hong Kong FinTech Week on November 2. According to Sunrate’s announcement, authorized agents can create and manage virtual cards, initiate transactions and retrieve payment results while businesses retain control over limits, permissions and approval policies.
The launch is relevant to Asia-Pacific companies managing cross-border spending because Sunrate operates from offices including Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and Shanghai. The company said the card is designed for procurement, business travel, marketing expenditure and supplier payments across multiple markets.
Controls define what an AI agent can spend
Businesses can generate a card for a specific transaction or workflow and set controls covering merchant category, amount, currency, geography and validity period. Cards can expire after the assigned task is completed. Sunrate said each action is recorded for audit purposes and that higher-risk transactions can be flagged or escalated for human review.
One use case outlined by the company is an online travel business issuing a virtual card for a marketing campaign or supplier payment. An AI agent could monitor spending against preset rules, block exceptions or execute a compliant transaction. Sunrate has not disclosed customer names, transaction volumes or commercial pricing for the new product.
The company said the card has completed Mastercard Agent Pay certification. The certification is intended to provide a framework for verifiable identity and authorization when an agent initiates a transaction on the Mastercard network. Mastercard did not issue a separate release with additional deployment metrics.
Product extends Sunrate’s agentic payment program
The card expands the Sunrate.AI portfolio, which the company says includes payment, foreign exchange, compliance, onboarding and chat agents. Sunrate describes the payment agent as supporting execution and reconciliation, while the other tools cover foreign exchange operations, compliance pre-screening and business onboarding.
In July, Sunrate and Mastercard released a white paper on agentic global payments that identified governance, authorization, auditability and interoperability as requirements for businesses allowing software agents to act within payment workflows. The new card is the company’s first announced payment instrument intended to apply that framework directly to commercial transactions.
Sunrate said it plans to extend agentic capabilities to additional payment and treasury use cases. The company operates payment infrastructure in more than 190 countries and regions, according to its own corporate information, but it has not announced a schedule for geographic availability or named launch customers for the agentic card.
Sunrate and Mastercard Release White Paper on Agentic AI and the Future of B2B Global Payments