Mastercard prepares for a future where AI agents make payments

FinanceShareShare this articleCopy linkX iconX (Twitter)LinkedInFacebookEmailMastercard prepares for a future where AI agents make paymentsThe company is working with Coinbase, Stripe and other companies to build trusted payment systems for AI-driven commerce.By Helene Braun, AI Boost|Edited by Sheldon Reback Jun 10, 2026, 4:00 p.m. 2 min readMake preferred on What to know: Mastercard introduced Agent Pay for Machines, a platform that lets AI agents and software systems make secure, automated payments across cards, bank accounts and stablecoins.The service aims to bring trust and control to agentic commerce by authenticating AI agents, enforcing spending limits and guaranteeing settlement through Mastercard’s network.More than 30 companies, including Coinbase, Stripe and Adyen, have joined the initiative, with agent permissions and credentials initially recorded on the Polygon, Solana and Base blockchains, and broader access planned later this year.Mastercard (MA) is betting that AI agents will soon become active participants in the economy and wants its payments network to sit at the center of that shift.The payments giant on Tuesday unveiled Agent Pay for Machines (AP4M), a service enabling AI agents and software systems to make payments to each other securely and at scale. The platform supports automated transactions across cards, bank accounts and stablecoins, while providing identity verification, spending controls and guaranteed settlement through Mastercard's network.The service comes as companies across technology, payments and crypto race to build infrastructure for what many are calling agentic commerce, where AI systems complete tasks, purchase services and coordinate transactions on behalf of users. Agents could be involved in trillions of dollars worth of transactions by the end of the decade, according to some estimates."We are already seeing a number of services and agents popping up to provide a range of products and services," Raj Dhamodharan, Ma…

Mastercard prepares for a future where AI agents make payments

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