Mastercard unveiled Agent Pay for Machines, partnering with Coinbase, OKX, and over 30 firms to support AI-powered payments across crypto and traditional networks.
Crypto News
Mastercard launched Agent Pay for Machines on June 10, an infrastructure built for payments made by autonomous AI agents. More than 30 companies have joined as early partners, including Coinbase, OKX, Stripe and Ripple.
Source: Mastercard
The system is known as AP4M. It adds a new layer on top of Mastercard's global network. The layer works across cards, bank accounts, and stablecoins. It targets high-volume, low-value transactions executed at machine speed. Legacy rails handle those microtransactions poorly.
"Agent Pay for Machines will create the conditions for a superbloom of AI business models," said Jorn Lambert, Mastercard's chief product officer. He said agents can buy and sell services at very high volumes, very small values, and extremely low latency.
Credentials Recorded on Polygon, Solana and Base
Trust sits at the center of the platform. AI Agents can prove that they are authorized to transact through credentialing, and users can set spending limits that the system enforces automatically. Mastercard's network guarantees settlement.
Agent permissions and credentials will first be recorded on the Polygon, Solana, and Base blockchains. Broader access is planned for later in 2026. Crypto partners include Aave Labs, Alchemy, Anchorage Digital, BVNK, MoonPay and the Solana Foundation. Checkout(dot)com and Cloudflare have also joined.
Raj Dhamodharan, who leads blockchain and digital asset products at Mastercard, told CoinDesk the company has solved similar trust problems in card and B2B payments for decades. "We're bringing the same level of trust and ability to find the right set of agents," he said.
Demand Signals Emerge Around HTTP 402
Dhamodharan said demand is already visible. He pointed to rising activity around HTTP 402, an emerging internet payment standard. "There are already many declines happening because there is no payment option available. That is a leading indicator in our view," he said.
The race to build agentic commerce infrastructure is heating up. Coinbase has incubated the open x402 protocol. Tempo built the Machine Payments Protocol. Visa has similarly started its own AI payment experiments. Some estimates say agents could handle trillions of dollars in transactions by the end of the decade.
The launch extends Mastercard's wider crypto strategy. The company settles cards with stablecoins such as USDC, PYUSD, and RLUSD. It agreed to acquire stablecoin startup BVNK in March. It also holds a New York BitLicense and runs a blockchain payments initiative with more than 100 partners, including Binance, Circle and PayPal.
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