Key insights
- Kite launched its mainnet and Agent Passport for autonomous AI agent payments, backed by $35M funding led by PayPal Ventures and General Catalyst. Pilot integrations with PayPal and Shopify are underway. This could streamline e-commerce and digital transactions, but its immediate impact on US equities is limited, pending wider adoption and integration with major platforms.
San Francisco, United Stated, April 30th, 2026, Chainwire
Kite today announced the launch of its mainnet and the Kite Agent Passport, an identity and payment infrastructure built specifically for autonomous AI agents.
The launch marks Kite’s transition from testnet to production, introducing a payments and settlement layer purpose-built for agent-driven transactions. The infrastructure combines three layers into a single platform: a stable native settlement layer (Kite Chain), a core agent service (Kite Agent Passport), and the Agent Interface & Experience.
The Kite Agent Passport gives AI agents a programmable, secure wallet to hold funds and make purchases on behalf of users—while users retain full control over spending limits and authorized destinations. For example, users can purchase physical goods, have them shipped home, and let their agent handle payments, all within Claude, with spending limits enforced by the Passport. Kite Chain serves as a stable native settlement layer, processing payments in digital dollars and connecting to traditional banking systems for everyday consumers. The Agent Interface & Experience enables agents and developers to interact with the system through agent registration, agent harnesses, and service discovery.
Kite is also positioning itself as a unified hub for major payment protocol standards, including the x402 payment standard, Google’s AP2 protocol, Stripe’s Machine Payment Protocol (MPP), and Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP). The company is also a member of the Linux Foundation’s Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF).
Kite has raised $35 million in funding led by PayPal Ventures and General Catalyst. Pilot integrations with PayPal and Shopify are underway, extending Kite’s payment infrastructure into real-world commerce.
The Kite Agent Passport is available now. Interested parties can try it today https://agentpassport.ai/or read how to get started https://agentpassport.ai/quickstart/
About Kite
Kite is building the payment infrastructure for the agent-native web — a foundational layer where autonomous AI agents can operate with verifiable identity, programmable governance, and native stablecoin settlement
Users can learn more about Kite: https://gokite.ai/
Yijing Shi
Kite AI
This article was originally published on Chainwire