Rebecca PY MALAYSIA, 22 JUNE 2026 – Mastercard has unveiled Agent Pay for Machines, a first-of-its-kind payment service built to support the rapid rise of autonomous AI agents that buy and sell goods and services without human intervention. The launch signals a fundamental shift in how digital commerce is structured, moving from user-initiated transactions to continuous, programmatic and machine-executed payments that can include microtransactions worth fractions of a cent.
The new service is designed to address a growing gap in payment infrastructure. As AI agents increasingly act on human intent, coordinating services, reserving resources and completing multi-step purchase chains automatically, existing payment systems built for human interactions are struggling to keep pace. Agent Pay for Machines is Mastercard’s answer to that challenge, providing credentialing, permissioning, transacting and settlement capabilities across its global network. The mechanics of this new payment layer are built on four core pillars. Every AI agent operating within the system is credentialed and recognised through Mastercard’s Verifiable Intent framework. Organisations can set programmable authorisation rules and spending limits to ensure transactions remain within defined parameters. Verified participants can then transact continuously across providers and systems, with multi-rail settlement supported across cards, bank accounts and stablecoins.
The real-world implications are wide-ranging. A small business owner could instruct an AI agent to build an entire web presence, purchasing a domain name, hosting, product images and a checkout page, all from a single human command that automatically triggers a chain of machine-executed transactions across multiple vendors. In logistics, an agent managing a delivery route could autonomously pay for freight, reserve loading-bay access, acquire cold-chain monitoring data and settle warehouse fees as a shipment moves in real time.
Jorn Lambert, Mastercard’s chief product officer, described the launch as creating the conditions for a superbloom of AI business models, noting that machine payments make it possible for services to be transacted among agents at fundamentally different scales than anything available today, with very high volumes, very small values and extremely low latency.
The initiative has attracted a broad coalition of more than 30 initial partners and supporters, spanning fintech, blockchain infrastructure and enterprise payments. Among those participating are Stripe, Coinbase, Cloudflare, Adyen, Ripple, Solana Foundation, Global Payments, Checkout.com, OKX, Polygon, MoonPay, Anchorage Digital and Ant International, among others.
Partners emphasised that the infrastructure decisions being made now will shape the trajectory of machine commerce for years to come. Cloudflare’s chief strategy officer noted that while the internet was built for human interactions, the infrastructure of the future must be built for autonomous ones. Adyen’s head of Agentic Commerce pointed to the importance of building these foundations openly, with merchant outcomes at the centre, to ensure the next era of commerce works for all participants in the ecosystem.
Agent Pay for Machines builds on Mastercard’s existing Agent Pay programme, launched in 2025, which established how trusted AI agents participate in payments more broadly. The new service is positioned as a complementary layer designed specifically for the automated, continuous and micro-scale transaction flows that define machine-to-machine commerce.
This launch also reflects a broader trend identified through Mastercard’s own market intelligence: enterprises are not only adopting AI faster, but they are increasingly requiring the payment layer to evolve in lockstep. Businesses need the assurance that transactions will settle reliably and securely, while agents need payments to execute instantly and without friction.