Mastercard agentic payments in Europe

Mastercard is a technology company in the global payments industry. It connects consumers, financial institutions, merchants, governments and businesses, and it runs a global network that authorizes, clears and settles card transactions (Mastercard annual report). The card itself comes from a bank: the issuer gives it to the cardholder, and the acquirer signs up the merchant. Merchant acquiring explains the four parties of a card payment.

Mastercard Agent Pay is Mastercard's product for payments that an AI agent starts on a person's behalf. Santander and Mastercard reported Europe's first live end-to-end payment executed by an AI agent, run as a pilot within Santander's regulated payment framework (Mastercard).

Worldline, ING and Mastercard then completed a payment in production. A merchant's AI agent found concert tickets within an ING cardholder's budget in the Netherlands, and the purchase went through only after the cardholder approved it. Worldline processed the payment on its issuing and acquiring platforms, ING authorized it as the issuing bank, and Mastercard ran it across its network (Worldline).

Agent payments build on card tokenization. Mastercard set the goal of tokenizing all e-commerce transactions in Europe by 2030, together with Click to Pay and payment passkeys, so that a shop or a wallet stores a token in place of the card number (Mastercard). A token bound to one merchant or one device is of no use to someone who steals it and tries it elsewhere. What is tokenization in payments? explains how a token is issued and checked.

Under PSD2, a card payment in the EEA needs strong customer authentication unless an exemption applies. In the Worldline and ING case the cardholder approved the purchase explicitly before it went through. Who confirms an agent's purchase, how and when, is one of the questions issuers and merchants have to settle before agent payments leave the pilot stage. Agentic payments covers the protocols that card networks and AI companies have published, and strong customer authentication the exemptions that apply today.

Mastercard speaks at Capital & Code, a conference in Frankfurt on stablecoins, tokenized funds and payments where Finance Loop is a media partner. Its panel on the future of payments brings together Mastercard, AllUnity, Worldline and PayPal, and payments started by AI agents are among the topics.

Agent Pay is Mastercard's product for payments that an AI agent starts for a cardholder. The payment runs over the Mastercard network with Mastercard's authentication and authorization checks, and the issuing bank authorizes it as it would any other card payment.

Yes. Santander ran a live payment executed by an AI agent as a pilot, and Worldline, ING and Mastercard completed a payment in production with a merchant in the Netherlands, after the cardholder had approved the purchase.

Yes. Visa tests payments by AI agents under the name Visa Intelligent Commerce, with banks in Europe. Visa in stablecoins, AI payments and card tokens describes how it works.