San Francisco, United States, April 30th, 2026 — 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.
Three-Layer Architecture: Settlement, Identity, and Interaction
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. Kite Chain processes payments in digital dollars and connects to traditional banking systems for everyday consumers. 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. The Agent Interface enables agents and developers to interact through registration, harnesses, and service discovery.
Ecosystem and Protocol Compatibility
Kite is now integrated with over 90 service providers, enabling a wide range of agentic payment use cases—from shopping and travel planning to DIY automated agentic workflows using paid services. The platform positions 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). Kite is also a member of the Linux Foundation's Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF).
Funding and Commercial Partnerships
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. According to Chi Zhang, Co-Founder and CEO of Kite, "The launch is just the beginning. Our mission is to create the trusted backbone for agent-driven economies—where every autonomous agent operates with verified identity, programmable permissions, and seamless settlement." The Kite Agent Passport is available now at agentpassport.ai, with a quickstart guide also provided.
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.