Sardis vs Every Alternative

TL;DR -- When to Use What

• Sardis -- You are building AI agents that make real payments and need policy guardrails, non-custodial wallets, and audit trails.
• Stripe -- You need traditional human payment processing (subscriptions, invoices, checkout).
• Circle -- You need raw USDC infrastructure (minting, bridging, programmable wallets) without agent-specific controls.
• Fireblocks -- You are an institution with $10M+ in digital assets needing enterprise custody.
• Skyfire -- You need simple agent micropayments and are okay with custodial wallets.
• Payman AI -- You want basic agent payments and do not need deep policy controls or non-custodial security.
• Coinbase -- You need consumer crypto products, Base chain, or fiat onramp without agent-specific governance.

Key Differentiators

Sardis vs Stripe

Stripe is designed for human-initiated payments. Their entire API assumes a user is clicking "Pay" in a browser. No protocol support for agent-to-agent payments. No MPC wallets. No agent identity.

When to use Stripe: Traditional human payment processing. When to use Sardis: Your AI agent needs autonomous payments with policy guardrails.

Sardis actually uses Stripe Issuing under the hood for virtual cards -- but wraps it with agent-specific policy enforcement, spending mandates, and cryptographic audit trails.

Sardis vs Circle

Circle is an infrastructure layer. They issue USDC and provide Programmable Wallets, but no agent-specific spending controls, policy engines, or approval workflows.

Sardis uses Circle's CCTP v2 for cross-chain bridging and Circle Paymaster for gasless transactions. We build the agent governance layer on top of Circle's infrastructure.

Sardis vs Fireblocks

Fireblocks is built for institutional custody ($10M+ assets, $100K+ ACV). Excellent MPC but nothing agent-specific. Massive overkill for deploying AI agents.

Sardis vs Skyfire

Direct competitor. Key difference: Skyfire uses custodial wallets (they hold your funds). Sardis uses non-custodial MPC wallets (you hold your keys). Sardis has a deeper policy engine (12 checks vs basic limits) and broader protocol support.

Sardis vs Payman AI

Direct competitor. Payman uses custodial wallet architecture. No AP2 protocol support, no MCP server with 52 tools, no cryptographic audit trail with Merkle proofs.

Framework Integrations

Multi-Chain Support