Mastercard launches protocol to let AI agents pay each other with blockchain verification

Mastercard Builds Infrastructure for AI Payments

Mastercard announced Wednesday the launch of Agent Pay for Machines, a protocol designed to enable AI agents to conduct autonomous financial transactions with each other1

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. Also called Agent Pay for AI, the platform addresses a specific challenge in agentic finance: allowing bots to execute micropayments between AI agents at scales fundamentally different from traditional commerce3

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. The infrastructure handles high-volume low-value payments that are continuous, embedded, and executed at machine speed with extremely low latency3

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The new protocol stores permissions that humans grant their AI agents onto a blockchain, making this information accessible to multiple parties who want to verify whether an agent is acting as instructed1

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. Initially, Mastercard chose to log those permissions onto Polygon, a network of blockchains built on top of Ethereum1

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. The platform supports credentialing, controls, and guaranteed settlement across cards, stablecoins, and other payment types3

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Over 30 Partners Join Open Ecosystem

Mastercard is collaborating with more than 30 companies to scale an open ecosystem for machine-to-machine payments by validating priority use cases and establishing common rules2

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. Partners include Coinbase, OKX, Polygon, RippleX, Aave Labs, Alchemy, Anchorage Digital, BVNK, MoonPay, Stripe, Cloudflare, and the Solana Foundation2

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"Agent Pay for Machines will create the conditions for a superbloom of AI business models," said Jorn Lambert, Mastercard's Chief Product Officer2

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. "Machine payments can make it possible for 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."2

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Practical Applications for AI-Powered Commerce

The platform's capabilities could enable new AI business models where a merchant's AI agent autonomously launches a store's web presence by buying a domain name, hosting service, images, and checkout pages3

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. Another example involves an AI agent accessing data piecemeal from a website, paying for small chunks of information as needed1

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Karan Katyal, head of agentic commerce at Adyen, emphasized that "infrastructure decisions made now will determine how the machine-to-machine payments space develops. Building these foundations with partners like Mastercard, openly and with merchant outcomes at the center, is how we ensure this next era of commerce works for everyone in the ecosystem."3

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Long-Term Vision Despite Uncertain Timeline

Lambert acknowledged realistic expectations about adoption timelines. "Am I expecting that this is going to be a huge revenue driver for Mastercard next year? No. Do I think it'll be a meaningful new addressable market for us over the next five years? I think so,"1

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he said. He predicted that AI chatbots will eventually sit between a meaningful share of e-commerce transactions because "it's just easier for consumers to do."1

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While Lambert expressed less certainty about whether machine-to-machine payments will take off, he noted that "too much is happening in that space" for some version of a bot-to-bot ecosystem not to emerge1

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Competing in the Agentic Finance Space

Mastercard isn't alone in pursuing agentic finance opportunities. Corporate heavyweights like Visa and Stripe have also built tools and protocols anticipating a future where bots manage bank accounts, buy groceries, and pay for subscriptions1

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. Coinbase launched the x402 protocol, Stripe worked with blockchain project Tempo to develop the Machine Payments Protocol, and Google released its own standard in September1

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Building on Previous Initiatives

The launch follows Mastercard's April 2025 introduction of Agent Pay, an agentic AI-driven payments program designed to integrate payments experiences into generative AI-powered conversational platforms3

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. In March, Mastercard introduced Verifiable Intent, an open-source framework that links a consumer's identity, instructions, and transaction outcome into a single, tamper-resistant record with a cryptographic audit trail3

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The announcement also comes after several moves by Mastercard into cryptocurrency. In March, the company launched a Crypto Partner Program with over 85 companies including Binance, Ripple, and PayPal2

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. That same month, Mastercard agreed to acquire stablecoin infrastructure firm BVNK for up to $1.8 billion2

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. The company also joined Solana's enterprise blockchain platform to support stablecoin settlement and expanded its program for settling transactions using regulated stablecoins including Circle's USDC and Ripple's RLUSD2

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