Mastercard launched Agent Pay for Machines, a service that let businesses use AI agents and software systems to execute automated payments under predefined rules and limits for programmatic transactions in digital commerce.
HOW IT WORKED
The new service targeted transactions that occurred programmatically in the background of digital commerce, including high-volume, low-value payments between AI agents, machines and software systems. Businesses can set spending limits and authorisation rules that are enforced programmatically, with payments permissioned, orchestrated and settled at machine speed across Mastercard's global network.
Agent Pay for Machines aimed to provide credentialing, controls and guaranteed settlement across cards, stablecoins and other payment types, while enabling businesses to control payment parameters. In one example given by Mastercard, an AI agent could set up an online store by buying a domain name, hosting, images and checkout tools within a set budget. Chief Product Officer Jorn Lambert said machine payments could allow services "to be bought and sold among agents at fundamentally different scales than payments today — very high volumes, very small values, very fast and at extremely low latency."
PARTNERS AND ROLLOUT
Agent Pay for Machines builds on Mastercard's Agent Pay programme, introduced in 2025 to support payments involving trusted AI agents.
More than 30 companies are among the first participants and supporters, including Adyen, Ant International, BVNK, Checkout.com, Cloudflare, Coinbase, Getnet by Santander, Global Payments, Lovable, OKX, Stripe and Tempo.
Mastercard said it was working with partners to test use cases, develop common rules and support adoption across industries.
Mastercard said permissions and credentials associated with AI agents would initially be recorded on the Polygon, Solana and Base blockchains, and that it planned to expand access to the service later in the year.
Sources: Fintech News Singapore