Mastercard’s new AI-Powered ‘Agent Pay’ will shop and pay on your behalf
Your next online purchase might just be as simple as telling your AI what you want.
Agentic AI is having a moment. In just the last few months, we’ve seen tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft, and OpenAI roll out AI agents designed to do more than just answer questions, they can now act on your behalf and help you book flights, manage schedules, and even shop.
Now, Mastercard is leaning into the growing trend, not just with another chatbot but with a full-on payments system designed for this new wave of intelligent agents.
This week, Mastercard launched Agent Pay, a new AI-driven payments program that lets AI agents shop and pay on your behalf. At the core of this new system is something called Agentic Tokens, a tech upgrade that builds on Mastercard’s existing tokenisation tools. Essentially, it allows AI agents to complete transactions using secure, virtual versions of your payment credentials for everyday purchases, recurring bills, or even cross-border business deals. So even if the transaction passes through multiple platforms, your sensitive data stays hidden.
Oluwaseun Bamisile
Mastercard says the aim is to support a future where AI agents don’t just recommend what to buy, but can actually carry out the transaction based on your input. That could mean asking your AI assistant to find the best outfit for an event and having it not only curate options but also place the order using your preferred payment method. Or it could be a small business letting its AI handle sourcing materials, managing logistics, and paying suppliers with a virtual Mastercard, all without lifting a finger.
Of course, these agents aren’t operating entirely on their own. Consumers still have the final say, approving purchases before they go through. But by letting the AI handle the grunt work — the browsing, price-checking, and payment setup — Mastercard is hoping to remove the friction we’ve all come to expect from digital commerce.
To scale this vision, Mastercard is partnering with major tech players like Microsoft, IBM, Braintree, and Checkout.com. Microsoft will help expand consumer use cases through tools like Copilot, while IBM will focus on business-to-business applications. And behind the scenes, tokenisation partners are making sure every transaction remains secure and traceable.
Louis Eriakha
According to Mastercard’s Chief Product Officer, Jorn Lambert, Agent Pay is just the beginning. The company is also working on tools to help merchants recognise and verify trusted AI agents, avoiding the risk of fraud as this technology becomes more common.
In a world where AI is quickly moving from helpful to hands-on, Mastercard is betting big on agentic commerce, and your next online purchase might just be as simple as telling your AI what you want.
