Mastercard is introducing Agent Pay for Machines (AP4M), a new service that will allow these transactions to be permissioned, orchestrated and settled at machine speed across its global payments network. Agent Pay for Machines allows Mastercard network participants to bring the trust and controls of the company?s global network to machine-driven commerce, helping AI innovators enable secure, reliable payments as software begins to transact on its own. Mastercard Agent Pay for Machines is designed to meet these needs.

The service builds on Mastercard?s Agent Pay program, introduced in Fiscal year 2025, by providing a system to scale high-frequency, low-latency, low-value payments executed by agents and machines. Where Agent Pay defines how trusted AI agents participate in payments, Agent Pay for Machines is designed for a complementary opportunity: automated, micro- and machine-driven transactions that happen continuously in the background of digital commerce. Mastercard Agent Pay for Machines supports credentialing, controls and guaranteed settlement across multiple payment types, from cards to stablecoins, enabling organizations to deploy automated payments with the interoperability, reliability and governance that the digital economy requires.

Mastercard Agent Pay for Machines establishes a trusted system for machine-driven transactions through a set of foundational capabilities: Credentialing: Every agent is credentialed, and with Verifiable Intent, can be recognized and transact with trust across ecosystems. Permissioning: Organizations can set authorization rules and spending limits that are programmatically enforced, ensuring transactions stay within defined parameters. Transacting: Verified participants can connect and transact across providers and systems, enabling continuous, high-frequency automated commerce. Settling: Supports reliable, guaranteed multi-rail settlement across cards, accounts and stablecoins.

Mastercard is collaborating with a broad set of partners to validate priority use cases, establish common rules and accelerate adoption across industries. Initial participants and supporters include: Aave Labs, Adyen, Alchemy, Anchorage Digital, Ant International, Basis Theory, BVNK, Catena, Checkout.com, Cloudflare, Coinbase, Coinflow, Crossmint, Getnet by Santander, Global Payments, Lovable Labs Incorporated, Mastercard Merchant Cloud, MoonPay, Nevermined, OKX, PayOS, Polygon, Rain, RippleX, Sapiom, Skyfire, Solana Foundation, Stripe, t54 Labs, Tempo, Turnkey and Utila. Mastercard Agent Pay for Machines expands Mastercard?s efforts to enable trusted digital interactions, from identity and authentication to trusted data exchange, so businesses can adopt new technologies without compromising the security, reliability and reach they expect from Mastercard?s global network.

Together with Agent Pay and Verifiable Intent, Mastercard Agent Pay for Machines reflects Mastercard?s continued investment in building trusted, open infrastructure for autonomous, agent-driven and machine-driven payments.