Mastercard launched Agent Pay for Machines, a service built to let AI agents and software systems make high-speed payments across cards, bank accounts and stablecoins.
Key Points:
- Mastercard says Agent Pay for Machines supports machine-driven commerce, including microtransactions worth fractions of a cent.
- More than 30 firms are involved, including Coinbase, RippleX, Stripe, Cloudflare, OKX and Solana Foundation.
- The launch expands Mastercard’s 2025 Agent Pay program, but broad adoption will depend on trust, controls and settlement reliability.
Mastercard Payments
Mastercard said Wednesday that Agent Pay for Machines is designed for transactions that happen in the background, where AI agents buy services, settle fees and follow spending rules without direct human action.
The company said the service uses credentialing, permissioning, transaction controls and multi-rail settlement across cards, accounts and stablecoins. It framed the product as infrastructure for commerce that is continuous, automated and often made up of very small payments.
“Agent Pay for Machines will create the conditions for a superbloom of AI business models,” said Jorn Lambert, Mastercard’s chief product officer.
The partner list includes Adyen, Ant International, BVNK, Checkout.com, Cloudflare, Coinbase, OKX, RippleX, Stripe, Polygon Labs, Solana Foundation, Aave Labs, Alchemy, Anchorage Digital, MoonPay, Skyfire, Tempo and others.
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AI Commerce
The announcement shows how payment companies are preparing for AI agents that can act as economic participants, not just recommendation tools.
Mastercard’s pitch centers on trust. Agents would need credentials, spending limits and auditable payment records before merchants and enterprises allow them to transact at scale.
Karan Katyal, head of Agentic Commerce at Adyen, said machine-to-machine payments remain early, but infrastructure choices made now will shape the market. Coinbase’s Nina Coughlin said programmable digital dollars and open standards could help agentic payments scale.
The crypto angle is central because Mastercard said the service can support stablecoin settlement. Earlier this year, the company expanded stablecoin work involving USDC (USDC) and RLUSD (RLUSD), after broader efforts to connect digital assets with its payments network.
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