Mastercard is expanding its artificial intelligence commerce tools with the launch of Agent Connect. The new platform connects merchants, AI agents, digital platforms, and payment providers through a single integration designed for shopping and payments.
Connecting Merchants with AI Shopping
Mastercard Agent Connect provides merchants with a single connection for AI-driven shopping across multiple platforms, handling product discovery, cart creation, and consumer-approved payments. Through the service, merchants can avoid building separate connections for every participating AI platform while supplying current prices, product details, and availability from their existing catalogs.
The system allows businesses to retain control over their branding, pricing, and customer relationships throughout the AI shopping experience. Agent Connect is integrated into Mastercard's broader Agent Suite for Merchants, which supports product searches, comparisons, recommendations, and checkout within merchant-controlled digital channels, as well as order tracking, refunds, and returns.
Additionally, Mastercard is collaborating with Anthropic to offer commerce tools that utilize Anthropic's commerce agent blueprint alongside Claude models and Mastercard payment capabilities. Jorn Lambert, Mastercard Chief Product Officer, noted that AI agents will alter the buying interface and that the company aims to help businesses maintain control during the transition.
Introducing Agent Pay and Machine Payments
Mastercard has also unveiled Agent Pay, a system that facilitates transactions made by AI agents following customer authorization by verifying permission to buy using a tokenized permission.
Furthermore, the company introduced Agent Pay for Machines, a service that supports automated transactions between software applications for regular, small-amount payments using either traditional cards or stablecoins. More than 30 companies currently support this machine-payment initiative, including Stripe, Coinbase, Adyen, Checkout, Cloudflare, OKX, and Global Payments. Mastercard continues to develop the technology through ongoing partnerships and merchant testing.
