Mastercard Opens Up AI Agent Payments With Early Access and Live Demo
Summary
Mastercard unveiled early access to Agent Pay for Machines, a system that lets AI agents discover paid services and transact within spending limits set by a business. Using the x402 payment protocol, agents issue digitally signed vouchers that providers verify before delivering services; payments can be settled later, with interactions happening off-chain. A live demo showed an agent making nine payments to two merchants for social media research and campaign images. Coinbase supplied the wallet, Base handled on-chain settlement, and BVNK supported fiat or stablecoin payments. Mastercard is releasing APIs, a toolkit and sandbox after pilots with several partners.
