Anchorage Digital is launching Agentic Banking to allow autonomous AI agents to access capital under a federal charter, aiming to automate institutional finance.
Anchorage Digital has launched a new infrastructure layer branded as Agentic Banking, designed to facilitate financial transactions initiated by autonomous AI agents. By integrating identity verification, granular spending limits, and real-time risk monitoring, the platform seeks to bridge the gap between AI-driven decision-making and regulated capital access. This move marks a significant pivot in institutional digital asset management, shifting from passive custody to active, programmable financial workflows that operate within the constraints of a federal banking charter.
At the center of this architecture is the requirement for AI agents to interact with corporate funds without bypassing traditional compliance protocols. Anchorage Digital, which secured a federal charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in January 2021, is leveraging this regulatory status to provide a sandbox for AI-driven capital movement. The platform utilizes Multi-Party Computation (MPC) key management, provided in collaboration with Google Cloud, to ensure that while AI agents may execute transactions, they remain tethered to immutable, auditable, and pre-defined risk controls.
Nathan McCauley, co-founder and CEO of Anchorage Digital, has emphasized that the transition to agentic finance requires more than just computational intelligence. According to McCauley, "We’re entering a world where agents don’t just inform decisions, they make them, and act on them. But for that to work in the real economy, agents need more than intelligence; they need regulated access to capital." This framework aims to prevent the risks associated with unmonitored autonomous spending by enforcing spending caps and real-time risk assessments on every transaction, whether in fiat, stablecoins, or tokenized credit.
Anchorage Digital is not the only firm attempting to integrate AI into the core of financial infrastructure. Fidelity National Information Services (FIS stock page) has similarly moved to automate compliance through its partnership with Anthropic. By deploying a Financial Crimes AI Agent, FIS aims to accelerate Anti-Money Laundering (AML) checks and improve the quality of Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs). The goal for these incumbents is to reduce the high rate of false positives that currently plague manual investigative processes.
Stephanie Ferris, CEO and president of FIS, noted the strategic importance of this positioning: "The future is about a trusted provider who manages the data, who governs the agents, and who stands between your customers and the AI making decisions about their money." This sentiment underscores a broader trend where traditional financial institutions and crypto-native banks are competing to become the primary governance layer for the emerging agentic economy. While Anchorage focuses on the custody and settlement of the assets themselves, firms like FIS are focusing on the automated oversight of the transactions those assets facilitate.
Beyond agentic banking, Anchorage is expanding its stablecoin issuance capabilities through a strategic cooperation agreement with M0. This partnership is designed to lower the barriers for firms looking to launch their own stablecoins by merging M0’s technology stack with Anchorage’s regulated issuance framework. By consolidating these services, Anchorage aims to reduce the operational complexity and time-to-market for financial companies seeking to integrate digital assets into their B2B2C product offerings.
This infrastructure play is intended to support the entire lifecycle of a digital asset, from issuance and staking to workflow management and final settlement. For institutional participants, the value proposition lies in the ability to utilize these tools without violating existing regulatory, operational, or security frameworks. As these systems scale, the ability to maintain a clear audit trail for every AI-initiated trade will likely become a baseline requirement for institutional participation in crypto market analysis.
The viability of this model depends on the robustness of the identity and risk-monitoring layers. If the AI agents are granted access to capital, the primary risk shift moves from human error to algorithmic failure or prompt injection vulnerabilities. Anchorage’s reliance on a federal charter provides a layer of institutional legitimacy, but the operational success of the platform will be tested by the ability of these systems to handle high-frequency, autonomous financial activity without triggering regulatory scrutiny or security breaches.
While SAFE stock page and other real estate or tech-adjacent firms navigate their own sector-specific volatility, the infrastructure providers in the digital asset space are betting that the future of finance is programmable. The success of this transition will be confirmed when institutional capital flows into these agentic systems with the same confidence currently reserved for traditional wire transfers. Conversely, any failure in the MPC key management or a breach of the spending limits would likely force a significant regulatory retreat, stalling the adoption of autonomous financial agents across the broader sector.
AI-drafted from named sources and checked against AlphaScala publishing rules before release. Direct quotes must match source text, low-information tables are removed, and thinner or higher-risk stories can be held for manual review.