Visa and Mastercard Build New Tools for AI-Powered Payments

The payments industry is preparing for a future in which artificial intelligence can do more than recommend products. Visa, Mastercard and Ant International have begun working on common standards for identifying and verifying AI agents that can make purchases on behalf of users. The initiative is centered on a “Know Your Agent” framework designed to allow payment networks, digital wallets, AI platforms and marketplaces to recognize trusted agents across different ecosystems while retaining their own security and risk controls.

The collaboration addresses a major challenge created by agentic commerce: determining whether an AI system is genuinely authorized to act for a customer. Unlike conventional online shopping, where a person directly selects products and completes a payment, an AI agent could potentially search for products, compare options, place an order and initiate payment based on instructions provided by its user. The companies are therefore working toward systems that can establish an agent’s identity, monitor its activity and provide greater visibility into transactions.

Visa and Mastercard have already been developing their own infrastructure for this emerging market. Visa has introduced capabilities including its Agentic Directory and Agent Score, while Mastercard has expanded its Agent Suite for Merchants and introduced Agent Connect. Mastercard says Agent Connect is designed to provide a single integration point connecting AI agents, merchants, commerce services and payment providers, allowing merchants to maintain control over pricing, fulfillment and other business rules.

The companies are also looking beyond ordinary consumer purchases toward automated transactions between software systems. Mastercard’s Agent Pay for Machines is designed to support high-frequency, low-value payments that can occur automatically between machines and AI agents. Such transactions could involve software purchasing digital services, data or computing resources without requiring a person to manually approve every individual payment, although authorization rules and spending limits remain important parts of the system.

The partnership with Ant International could help create greater interoperability between these competing payment ecosystems. Ant’s Alipay+ platform connects numerous digital wallets and merchants across different markets, giving the company an important role in developing standards for AI-driven commerce. The broader effort shows that payment companies are preparing for a potential shift in which AI agents become active participants in digital commerce, but widespread adoption will depend on establishing reliable identity, authorization, fraud prevention and accountability mechanisms before consumers can comfortably allow software to transact on their behalf.