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 shift.
The payments giant on Tuesday unveiled Agent Pay for Machines (AP4M), a service that enables AI agents and software systems to make payments to each other securely and at scale. The platform supports automated transactions across cards, bank accounts and stablecoins, while providing identity verification, spend control and guaranteed settlement through Mastercard’s network.
The service comes as companies across technology, payments and crypto race to build infrastructure for what many call agent commerce, where AI systems perform tasks, buy services and coordinate transactions on behalf of users. Agents could be involved in trillions of dollars worth of transactions by the end of the decade, according to some estimates.
“We’re already seeing a number of services and agents emerging to provide a number of products and services,” Raj Dhamodharan, Mastercard’s executive vice president of blockchain and digital asset products and partnerships, 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 building trust between these systems.
Businesses and consumers need confidence that agents are interacting with legitimate counterparties and operating within approved spending limits. Service providers, meanwhile, need assurance that they will be paid.
“These are problems that we’ve been solving before in the B2B world and the mapped world for decades,” Dhamodharan said. “We bring that same level of trust and ability to find the right set of agents, the ability to convey that you’re actually going to make the payment and make sure people can get paid.”
The platform is designed to address these concerns through credentialing, authorization and settlement services. The company said the system can authenticate agents, enforce spending rules and settle payments across 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 that permissions and credentials associated with AI agents will initially be recorded on the Polygon, Solana and Base blockchains.
Although large-scale machine-to-machine commerce is still nascent, Dhamodharan said Mastercard is already seeing signs of demand. He pointed to increasing activity around HTTP 402, an emerging Internet payment standard where automated transactions often fail because no payment method is available.
“There are already transactions going on,” he said. “A lot of declines are already happening because there’s no payment option available. That’s a leading indicator in our opinion.”
Mastercard said it plans to expand access to Agent Pay for Machines later this year.
