The way people shop, pay and get paid is changing. Mastercard is moving quickly to avoid the risk of being left behind. This week, the company rolled out a package of developer tools, industry standards work, and new partnerships designed to let AI agents make purchases on behalf of consumers with the same ease and trust people expect from today’s electronic payments.
The move builds on work the company has been doing with AI over the past many months. Earlier this year, Mastercard introduced Agent Pay, a system that lets approved AI assistants make transactions using special “agentic tokens.” Now the company is expanding that idea, providing the infrastructure and rules needed to make agent-driven commerce both secure and scalable.
What is Agentic Commerce?
The main idea of agentic commerce is that autonomous generative AI systems won’t just suggest products or services, but act on the behalf of users as their buying agents. These agents remember past choices, balance price against speed or customer preferences, and execute purchases within given limits. In the not too distant future, people might ask their AI agents to “order groceries from my shopping list, keep it under $120, and deliver on Thursday.” The agent then would perform the task with little or no further human intervention.
That shift disintermediates ecommerce systems and removes the familiar checkout step, as well as any upsell or cross-sell opportunities. Instead of clicking “buy,” consumers would set rules and let agents carry them out. The promise is convenience, speed, and personalization. However, without strong safeguards, agentic systems can lead to loss of control, resulting in misinterpreted intent, falling prey to fraud, or exposing sensitive data.
“AI-powered payments aren’t just a trend, they’re a transformation,” said Craig Vosburg, Mastercard’s chief services officer.
The idea of agentic commerce has been gaining traction across industries. Visa calls its version “intelligent commerce.” PayPal, Stripe, and major tech platforms are all experimenting with ways to let their agents spend money. The field is still early and the infrastructure needed for trust and facilitation is incomplete.
Mastercard’s Latest Steps
Mastercard’s latest announcement adds additional capabilities that extend its previous efforts. The company introduced an Agent Toolkit that relies on a Model Context Protocol server to make its APIs machine-readable and more easily able to connect to the most popular LLMs. This eases the task of integrating payments into AI-driven workflows.
Alongside the toolkit is an Agent Sign-Up system, allowing developers to register their agents as verified participants in Mastercard’s network. In order to add personalization features, Mastercard created Insight Tokens that, with consumer consent, give agents access to the company’s permission-based data signals.
The company is also offering consulting services to banks, merchants, and AI developers to help them integrate these features into products more quickly. Mastercard is also working closely with standards bodies such as the FIDO Alliance to create verifiable credentials that prove a shopper approved the merchant, the product, and the transaction amount. This will help with issues of disputing credit card transactions and providing evidence of user consent to the purchase. The company says U.S. cardholders will have access to Agent Pay by this year’s holiday season, with global rollout coming later.
AI Making Waves in the Payments Industry
Mastercard isn’t the only one chasing this vision of agentic commerce. Visa has been testing similar ideas under the label intelligent commerce. The company has run pilots to let AI assistants connect directly to Visa’s network so agents can complete purchases without constant human oversight.
PayPal is taking a wallet-centric path. By giving agents controlled access to its digital wallets, PayPal lets them pay wherever its service is accepted. The focus is on extending convenience rather than redesigning the system.
Stripe plays to its strengths with developers and startups. The company has been building APIs that allow AI agents to manage subscriptions, send invoices, or complete checkouts. Technology giants are circling as well. Google and Amazon have begun testing ways for their assistants to handle transactions directly, not just recommend products. Regulators will be watching closely.
Against this backdrop, Mastercard’s plan to make payments “native to the agentic experience” is a bolder step. By opening a developer toolkit, creating credential standards, and tying the rollout to a defined timeline, it is trying to set the rules others may have to follow.
“Payments must be native to the agentic experience,” explains Vosburg. “We’re building the infrastructure for a new generation of intelligent transactions, where consumers and developers can empower AI agents to act on their behalf with trust, transparency and precision.”
Mastercard is investing not only in technology but in industry standards. If agents are to act independently, networks must guarantee that their actions remain valid and reversible.
Challenges for Agentic Commerce
Mastercard faces many potential challenges and obstacles in advancing agentic commerce. One of the thorniest problems is liability. If an agent buys the wrong product, who is responsible, the shopper, the developer, or the merchant?
Privacy is another concern. People might hesitate to use Mastercard’s Insight Tokens unless they understand exactly what data is shared and how it is used. Fraud is a real concern as well. Verifying agents is far harder than verifying human buyers. While sign-up systems and credential standards can help, fraudsters will quickly test their limits.
Then there is the general uneasiness with AI agents making buying decisions. Handing spending power to a piece of software makes people uneasy. Adoption will depend on notifications, override options, and transparency into agent decisions. Also, commerce does not stop at national borders. Payments and identity laws differ across countries, and aligning standards across jurisdictions will prove difficult.
What the Future Brings
If agentic commerce succeeds, the act of “checking out” could fade away. Consumers would set preferences, agents would follow them, and payments would occur quietly in the background. The visible part of commerce would shrink, but the trust layer including tokens, credentials and permissions would grow.
Mastercard’s bet is that being first to provide that trust layer will keep it central in digital commerce. If agents rise and Mastercard isn’t part of the new commerce reality, its role shrinks. By moving now, it hopes to shape the future before competitors or regulators dictate them.
The future will show whether consumers trust AI agents to spend on their behalf, and whether payment companies can secure a lead in writing the rules for this new model of commerce.