Mastercard has introduced Agent Pay, an initiative aimed at embedding secure, intelligent payments into AI-driven experiences, advancing what it terms “agentic commerce”.

The Agentic Payments Program, which includes Mastercard Agentic Tokens, builds on the company’s existing tokenization technology to allow AI agents to make personalized, secure, and seamless purchases on behalf of users.

These tokens support services such as mobile payments, recurring subscriptions, and Mastercard Payment Passkeys, now extended to transactions initiated through generative AI.

“The launch of Mastercard Agent Pay marks our initial steps in redefining commerce in the AI era,” said Jorn Lambert, Chief Product Officer at Mastercard. “We are keen to collaborate with industry players to advance standards for agentic payments.”

Mastercard is also working with Microsoft to integrate payment solutions with Azure OpenAI Service and Copilot Studio, supporting scalable AI-enabled shopping and business applications.

It is also collaborating with IBM’s watsonx Orchestrate on B2B automation and partnering with platforms like Braintree and Checkout.com to broaden tokenization for merchants.

The system allows AI agents to autonomously manage transactions — from selecting birthday outfits to handling cross-border sourcing and payments for small businesses — while ensuring transparency, user control, and fraud protection.

Users can set clear purchase permissions for their AI agents, with every transaction authenticated via Mastercard’s tokenization and biometric security tools. Agents must be verified before gaining payment authorization.