Key takeaways
Adam Lowe says Arculus cards work as a payment card, a hardware wallet and a hardware passkey in one credential, and the technology already sits behind cards such as Gemini's.
Arculus has built a point of sale that accepts stablecoins directly and is working with acquirers in LatAm and Europe, with Brazil named as a market that asks for USDT.
Lowe says the next projects are MPC key management to remove recovery phrases and a passkey-style control for agentic AI transactions.
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Summary
After building one metal card that pays, holds keys and logs users in, CompoSecure's Arculus unit is turning to market execution, stablecoin payments abroad and hardware approval for AI agents.
Adam Lowe, speaking from the Compose Secure facility, says a single Arculus card is now "a payment card, it's a hardware wallet, and it's a hardware passkey." He described a point of sale that takes stablecoins directly and plans to secure agentic AI transactions with the same tap-to-sign hardware.
One card, three jobs
The Gemini card carries "powered by Arculus" on the back and includes the Arculus security passkey for logging in, Lowe says. He adds that in the Coinbase app, the hardware passkey is the most secure two-factor option. The cards run on a FIPS 140-2 Level 3 chip that he says meets federal requirements for the DOD and the intelligence community.
At Compose Secure, card layers are laminated under heat and pressure for about half an hour, then machined and often individually engraved. Lowe says Arculus tech is in millions of payment cards with traditional banks as well as in DeFi self-custody platforms, and that the Stellar Foundation paid the team to write payment smart contracts.
“Take a market like Brazil, they ask for USDT everywhere, you know, and people want to hold digital dollars”
Adam LoweStablecoins at the till
Lowe says people in Brazil "ask for USDT everywhere." With the Arculus point of sale, a cardholder taps and the card signs the transaction directly. He says the company is partnering with acquirers and POS merchants in LatAm and Europe, preferring nimble players because some of the biggest firms "just move a little slow."
Banks, MPC and AI agents
Lowe expects large US banks to publicly turn on Arculus passkey login this year and next year. He says new CEO Graham, formerly of Honeywell, has pushed leaders toward "the next disruptive innovation" now that much of the product is built.
That work includes MPC key management that would remove recovery phrases, which Lowe calls a very hard cryptographic challenge that will take time. On AI, he points to a Mastercard draft open source framework and pictures users tapping a card to authorize an agent under set conditions.
Lowe describes Arculus as moving from building to selling, and says the team will grow in Brazil, Europe and Southeast Asia while it works on stablecoin payments, MPC and agent controls.
Arculus, Coinbase, Mastercard, and MetaMask come up most.
- People
- Adam Lowe
- Graham
- Companies
- Arculus
- Coinbase
- Mastercard
- MetaMask
- Carta
- Gemini
- Honeywell
- Rain
- Circle
- Cyclops
- EtherFi
- Shift4
- WalletConnect
- Compose Secure
- Anchorage Digital
- Stellar Development Foundation
- Dfns
