Crossmint’s Agent Vault: Save Your Card Once and Give Your AI Agent a Budget

A vault for any card

Alex Rawitz describes the universal vault as an expansion of Crossmint's agent cards product. Before, it only supported cards compatible with the newest agentic protocols, which he names as intelligent commerce, Mastercard, and agent pay. Now any card can be saved for later use by the agent. The vault is white label for agent builders, and instead of minting a new virtual card every time, the protocols handle card creation and card numbers a different way.

He says the order intents Crossmint uses with Visa and Mastercard can be time bound, but can also be longer lived. He contrasts the model with the earliest approach, when users gave their card number to their own agent; he says something like 10% of those card numbers ended up leaked, while noting he forgets the exact figures.

Run like a startup

Alex Rawitz says Crossmint has been shipping agentic products since 2024, and that the agentic team is treated like a startup within the company that gets to chart its own path. "We're staying nimble," he says.

Specialists over one assistant

Alex Rawitz expects consumer assistants to look like phones today, where the average person has about 80 apps and the top four make up something like 80% of usage. Most builders he speaks with want a wedge, such as travel or agentic shopping for collectibles.

He praises Muse for offering more of a UX than iMessage-based agents. He says that two to three months ago agents asked for a 30-minute interview to solve the time to value problem, while Instinct and Muse now ask next to nothing upfront. He also notes he read that Instinct tries to forget 90% of what happens rather than remember everything.