Mastercard (MA) is betting that AI agents will soon become active participants in the economy and wants its payments network to be at the center of that change.
The payments giant on Tuesday unveiled Agent Pay for Machines (AP4M), a service that allows AI agents and software systems to make payments to each other securely and at scale. The platform supports automated transactions between cards, bank accounts and stablecoins, while providing identity verification, spending control and guaranteed settlement through Mastercard’s network.
The service comes as technology, payments and crypto companies race to build infrastructure for what many call agent commerce, where AI systems complete tasks, purchase services and coordinate transactions on behalf of users. By some estimates, agents could be involved in transactions worth billions of dollars by the end of the decade.
“We are already seeing a number of services and agents popping up to provide a range of products and services,” Raj Dhamodharan, executive vice president of blockchain and digital assets products and partnerships at Mastercard, told CoinDesk. These services range from booking travel and building websites to creating artwork and completing other digital tasks.
Dhamodharan said the next challenge is creating trust between these systems.
Businesses and consumers must have confidence that agents are interacting with legitimate counterparties and operating within permitted spending limits. Service providers, for their part, must have assurance that they will be paid.
“These are problems that we have already been solving in the B2B world and in the cards world for decades,” Dhamodharan said. “We bring the same level of trust and ability to find the right group of agents, the ability to make it clear that you’re actually going to make the payment and ensure that people can get paid.”
The platform is designed to address these concerns through accreditation, authorization and settlement services. The company said the system can authenticate agents, enforce spending rules, and settle payments via multiple payment methods, including stablecoins.
More than 30 companies have joined the initiative, including Coinbase (COIN), Stripe, Adyen, Checkout.com, Cloudflare, RippleX, Polygon Labs, Solana Foundation and OKX. Mastercard said permissions and credentials associated with AI agents will initially be recorded on the Polygon, Solana and Base blockchains.
Although large-scale machine-to-machine trading is still in its infancy, Dhamodharan said Mastercard is already seeing signs of demand. He pointed to growing activity around HTTP 402, a new payment standard on the Internet, where automated transactions often fail because no payment method is available.
“There are already transactions underway,” he said. “Many declines are already happening because no payment options are available. This is a leading indicator in our opinion.”
Mastercard has announced plans to expand access to Agent Pay for Machines later this year.
