Mastercard Advances AI in Payments
Mastercard is taking a major step toward the future of AI-powered payments with the launch of new developer tools, consulting services, and global partnerships. The company’s goal is to create smarter, more secure shopping experiences using artificial intelligence and intelligent agents, while also setting standards for how AI can securely handle transactions.
Building the Future of AI Shopping
As part of its strategy, Mastercard is working with industry leaders, including Stripe, Google, and Ant International’s Antom to make secure agentic transactions scalable for merchants and platforms worldwide.
- By the 2025 holiday season, all U.S. Mastercard cardholders will be enabled for the Mastercard Agent Pay program, with a global rollout to follow.
- Citi and U.S. Bank Mastercard customers will be among the first to experience AI-enabled shopping, supported by providers such as PayOS, Firmly.AI, Basis Theory, and others.
New Tools for Developers
To accelerate adoption, Mastercard is introducing several innovations:
- Agent Toolkit: Available on Mastercard Developers, this toolkit helps AI assistants and agentic tools access Mastercard’s APIs through structured, machine-readable documentation using the Model Context Protocol (MCP). It integrates with platforms like Claude, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot, making APIs more discoverable and usable in AI workflows.
- Agent Sign-Up: A streamlined process for developers to register their AI agents and access Mastercard’s AI-enabled services.
- Insight Tokens: A secure method for agents to apply permissioned insights from Mastercard. With consumer consent, these tokens enable personalised and data-driven shopping experiences. Already in use with SAP Concur, this innovation will scale across industries.
- Agentic Consulting Services: Expert support for issuers, acquirers, merchants, and AI enablers to design and launch intelligent commerce experiences faster.
Setting Industry Standards for AI Payments
Mastercard is also shaping the global standards for AI commerce, leveraging its expertise in digital payments, tokenisation, and security.
Together with the FIDO Alliance Payments Working Group, Mastercard and other stakeholders are developing a verifiable credential standard for AI transactions. This ensures that critical details such as amount, merchant, and product are validated and approved by the shopper, providing transparency and trust across the ecosystem.
A Trusted Foundation for Agentic Transactions
Craig Vosburg, Chief Services Officer at Mastercard, emphasised the transformative nature of the shift: “AI-powered payments aren’t just a trend, they’re a transformation. We’re building the infrastructure for a new generation of intelligent transactions, where consumers and developers can empower AI agents to act on their behalf with trust, transparency and precision.”
Jorn Lambert, Chief Product Officer at Mastercard, added: “We’re working with partners across the ecosystem to build the standards and tools that will define agentic commerce. We’re committed to enabling a trusted environment for AI-powered payments to scale globally.”
Conclusion
With its developer toolkit, consulting services, and global partnerships, Mastercard is laying the foundation for agentic commerce, an era where AI agents securely manage payments and shopping experiences. By setting interoperable standards and enabling real-world adoption, Mastercard is positioning itself at the forefront of the future of intelligent payments.
