Mastercard is letting AI agents buy goods for cardholders through a new deal with Alchemy, as one company executive says about 132 million consumers now use AI.
Key Points:
- Alchemy's AgentCard now gives AI agents one-time-use Mastercard credentials for online purchases.
- Cardholders can cap spending, restrict merchants and require approval before an agent buys.
- Alchemy signed a similar deal with Visa in June, and both networks are now building shared agent standards.
Mastercard AgentCard Launch
Alchemy announced the integration Thursday in a press release and a post on X. Its AgentCard product now plugs into Mastercard Agent Pay, the card network's framework for purchases made by AI agents. Agents can use the credentials at any online merchant that accepts Mastercard, according to the company.
With a single command-line tool, developers can equip an agent in under a minute with an email address, a phone number, a stablecoin wallet and one-time-use Mastercard credentials. The product also supports Verifiable Intent, a Mastercard framework that records what a user approved, including the merchant and the amount.
Those credentials are tokenized and linked to a user's existing card, so rewards and credit lines stay in place. Cardholders can set spending caps, limit which merchants an agent may use and require a check-in before any purchase goes through. The system also relies on bank-issued "agentic tokens," which bundle the user's intent with transaction details so the network can confirm an agent stays within its limits.
"The checkout button is dying," Alchemy wrote.
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Mastercard's Agent Bet
Mastercard Chief Product Officer Jorn Lambert said in a report published Thursday that the shift is "not about if, it's about when and how quickly." U.S. Co-President Chiro Aikat told an interviewer that about 132 million consumers use AI and that shopping is becoming part of that activity.
Security remains the harder problem. Mastercard's chief AI and data officer, Greg Ulrich, said earlier this year that the company had spent years writing risk rules meant "to stop a bot from transacting," and that those rules now have to change. Many shoppers also remain wary of handing card details to software they cannot watch, fearing charges they never approved.
Alchemy first launched AgentCard in March and connected it to Visa's agent payment system in June, so the tool now works across both card networks. On Sept. 10, Mastercard, Visa and Ant International agreed to build common "know your agent" standards, meaning an agent verified by one network would not have to register again with the others.
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