Mastercard has rolled out Agent Pay for AI, a new payments protocol built to let artificial-intelligence agents transact with one another — including tiny, automated micropayments — while recording the permissions humans grant those agents on-chain, Fortune reports (exclusive, June 10).
Why this matters
- Current payment rails are optimized for human-initiated purchases at merchants, not for the granular, machine-to-machine transactions AI systems will increasingly need. Think: an AI buying access to a single piece of data on a website, or paying another service incrementally while completing a task for a user. Agent Pay for AI targets that specific gap.
How it works
- Permissions that a human gives an AI agent are written to a public blockchain so multiple parties can independently verify whether an agent is acting within authorized limits — rather than relying on a single centralized ledger. Mastercard chose Polygon, a layer-2 network built on Ethereum, for the initial deployment.
Who’s building it
- Mastercard is developing the protocol with fintech platform Adyen, crypto exchange Coinbase, and internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare. That mix — a payments processor, a crypto-native exchange, and a company that handles large swaths of web traffic — signals the project aims to be interoperable infrastructure rather than a closed Mastercard garden.
A crowded field
- Mastercard isn’t alone. Visa and Stripe are already developing tools for an AI-driven commerce world. Coinbase launched the x402 protocol for AI payments, Stripe teamed with Tempo on a Machine Payments Protocol, and Google released its own standard in September 2025, Fortune notes.
Commercial outlook and strategy
- Mastercard’s Chief Product Officer Jorn Lambert told Fortune he doesn’t expect Agent Pay for AI to be a major revenue driver in the next 12 months, but sees it as a “meaningful new addressable market” over five years. He also predicted AI chatbots will eventually intermediate a meaningful share of e-commerce transactions — framing the protocol as infrastructure built ahead of a shift in commerce flows.
A bigger picture for Mastercard and crypto rails
- The choice to anchor the permissions layer on a public blockchain comes days after Mastercard opened its global settlement rails to six regulated stablecoins across eight blockchain networks. Taken together, these moves indicate the card network is systematically reworking parts of its architecture around crypto rails rather than treating blockchain as an optional add-on.
Bottom line
- Agent Pay for AI is an early bet on the micropayments and machine-to-machine economy that could emerge as AI agents handle more everyday commerce tasks. With major partners and a public-chain approach, Mastercard is positioning itself to be a bridge between traditional payments and a new era of on-chain, agent-driven transactions.
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