Mastercard has unveiled its Agentic Payments Programme, Mastercard Agent Pay, a solution designed to transform commerce by integrating agentic AI.  

This programme introduces Mastercard Agentic Tokens, which aim to enhance tokenisation capabilities for global commerce solutions. 

The solution will leverage Mastercard’s existing tokenisation infrastructure, which supports mobile contactless payments, secure card-on-file transactions, and Mastercard Payment Passkeys.  

Additionally, it will facilitate programmable payments for recurring expenses and subscriptions. 

Mastercard will work with Microsoft to incorporate Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service and Microsoft Copilot Studio into Mastercard’s payment solutions.  

This integration seeks to develop and scale agentic commerce, enhancing the way that businesses and consumers interact with payment systems. 

Furthermore, Mastercard is partnering with technology providers such as IBM and its Watson Orchestrate product to expedite B2B use cases.  

The programme also involves collaborations with acquirers and checkout solutions such as Braintree and Checkout.com to enhance the tokenisation capabilities. 

For banks, the integration of tokenised payment credentials across agentic commerce platforms is expected to enhance the security of digital transactions.  

The programme stipulates that AI agents must be registered and verified before they can initiate secure payments on behalf of users.  

The enhanced tokenisation technology will enable transactions to be initiated through conversational interfaces. 

Mastercard chief product officer Jorn Lambert said:  “Mastercard is transforming the way the world pays for the better by anticipating consumer needs on the horizon. The launch of Mastercard Agent Pay marks our initial steps in redefining commerce in the AI era, including new merchant interfaces to distinguish trusted agents from bad actors using agentic technology.  

“Recognising the seismic implications of this evolution, we are keen to collaborate with industry players to advance the standards for agentic payments, such as applying the Model Context Protocol to Secure Remote Commerce. This lays the foundation for scale and builds trust in agentic commerce.” 

Recently, Mastercard agreed to take a stake of around 3% in Corpay’s cross-border business for $300m.