Summary
- Mastercard has introduced Agent Pay for Machines, a platform facilitating autonomous payments driven by AI.
- The service allows machine-to-machine transactions, including microtransactions that can be worth mere fractions of a cent.
- Participation includes Coinbase, OKX, Polygon, RippleX, Stripe, Cloudflare, along with over two dozen additional companies.
On Wednesday, Mastercard unveiled Agent Pay for Machines, a new payments platform that enables AI agents to conduct transactions independently using various payment methods such as cards, bank accounts, and stablecoins.
The platform is intended to empower AI systems to autonomously purchase services and execute payments, including minor transactions that occur seamlessly in the background. This initiative enhances Mastercard's existing Agent Pay program by facilitating payments among AI agents, software platforms, and interconnected devices.
“Agent Pay for Machines will create the conditions for a superbloom of AI business models,” stated Jorn Lambert, Chief Product Officer at Mastercard. “Machine payments can enable services to be traded among agents at fundamentally different scales than today’s transactions—very high volumes, very low values, very rapid, and with minimal latency.”
Over 30 companies have joined this initiative, including Coinbase, OKX, Polygon, RippleX, Aave Labs, Alchemy, Anchorage Digital, BVNK, MoonPay, Stripe, Cloudflare, and the Solana Foundation.
This launch represents Mastercard's ongoing commitment to integrating AI into commerce as various players in the payments and cryptocurrency sectors—including MoonPay, MetaMask, and Coinbase—examine the potential of autonomous AI agents to eventually facilitate service purchases and transactions without direct human oversight.
This announcement follows several of Mastercard's recent efforts in the cryptocurrency sector this year.
In March, Mastercard initiated a Crypto Partner Program alongside over 85 firms, including Binance, Ripple, and PayPal, aimed at developing products that merge digital assets with Mastercard's payment infrastructure. Later that month, the company agreed to acquire the stablecoin infrastructure firm BVNK for as much as $1.8 billion to enhance its digital asset payment and settlement capabilities.
Throughout 2026, Mastercard has also focused on expanding its stablecoin operations. In March, the firm joined Solana's enterprise blockchain platform to facilitate stablecoin settlement. Earlier this month, Mastercard broadened its program for settling transactions with regulated stablecoins, including Circle's USDC and Ripple's RLUSD.