Mastercard used its Oct. 30 earnings call to mark a turning point in digital payments, announcing that AI shopping agents have already completed purchases on its network and that the rollout of its new Agent Pay platform is underway in the U.S.
“Our first agentic transaction took place on our network this quarter,” CEO Michael Miebach told analysts.
U.S. Bank and Citibank cardholders can now use Agent Pay, he said. Additionally, it will enable the feature for the rest of its U.S. issuers in November, with a global rollout in early 2026.
Miebach described agent-led payments as a “significant paradigm shift” for the industry.
“Agentic commerce is here, and we’re at the center of it,” he said. “With our global acceptance reach, trusted brand and services capabilities, we’re instrumental in creating the foundation for agentic commerce.”
Mastercard collaborates with OpenAI, Google and Cloudflare to develop safety and authentication standards for autonomous transactions. At the same time, Visa is also rolling out new tools to help secure agentic commerce transactions. Underpinning both frameworks is Cloudflare’s Web Bot Auth technology, developed in collaboration with Microsoft, Shopify, Checkout.com, Worldpay, Adyen and others.
Mastercard ushers in agentic commerce
To help merchants participate, the company has introduced a “no-code” acceptance framework, allowing any Mastercard merchant to recognize certified AI agents without major integration work.
“We’ve made it easy for merchants across the globe to benefit on day one,” Miebach said.
Mastercard’s Agent Pay program requires every agent to be registered and verified, with its identity and authorization data passed through the transaction for traceability. Miebach said services like Ethoca’s real-time dispute data and Mastercard Threat Intelligence will underpin security and fraud prevention.
He called the agent-commerce shift a growth opportunity.
“This will be very hard to do for local payment networks,” he said. “We see a tremendous opportunity to compete as agentic commerce scales.”
While early use cases center on consumers, Mastercard expects the same framework to support AI-driven B2B purchasing and reconciliation.
“Everything I just said does not stop at consumer,” Miebach added.
The company’s message was clear: autonomous shopping isn’t a far-off concept — it’s live on the Mastercard network, with expansion coming fast.
“Only when there is trust,” Miebach said, “will this whole space actually evolve.”
Sign up
Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 B2B News. It covers technology and business trends in the growing B2B ecommerce industry. Contact Mark Brohan, senior vice president of B2B and Market Research, at mark@digitalcommerce360.com. Follow him on Twitter @markbrohan. Follow us on LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and YouTube.
FavoriteThe post Mastercard: “Agentic commerce is here” appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.
from Digital Commerce 360 https://ift.tt/f3V6B0A
0 Comments