Mastercard Launches Agent Pay for Machines with Live Demo

Mastercard has introduced Agent Pay for Machines, allowing AI agents to autonomously discover services, agree to terms, and make payments within human-set limits. This system was first announced in June and demonstrated at Cloudflare's Connect conference by Mastercard's Jorn Lambert. The initiative addresses the challenge of AI agents acting as economic entities needing to purchase data, AI models, and computing power from various providers, each requiring separate accounts or billing relationships. Agent Pay for Machines utilizes the x402 open protocol for payment requests, integrated with Mastercard's network. When an agent encounters a service that requires payment, it generates a digitally signed voucher, which is verified by the provider before service delivery. In a live demo, an agent for marketing agency Hype executed a protein-bar campaign, making nine payments to two merchants without needing separate accounts or invoices. Coinbase's developer platform provided the wallet, while the Ethereum layer-2 network Base facilitated on-chain settlement. BVNK, acquired by Mastercard in August, managed payments in fiat or stablecoins. This launch follows successful pilots with Cloudflare, Ant International, AWS, BVNK, and Coinbase, and includes APIs, a toolkit, and a sandbox for developers. The announcement is part of Mastercard's broader push into stablecoins and AI agents.

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