Mastercard launches Agent Pay for Machines for AI micropayments

Mastercard announced Agent Pay for Machines (AP4M) on Wednesday, a payments infrastructure intended to enable fast, continuous transactions between AI agents and machines and to support stablecoin payments. More than 30 fintech and crypto firms joined as early adopters, including Coinbase, OKX and Tempo.

AP4M adds a layer on top of Mastercard’s global network to handle high-volume, low-value payments at machine speed. The system is designed to move small, frequent transactions across card rails, bank accounts and stablecoins that traditional payment systems treat as too costly to process.

The service includes credentialing and permissioning features that let an AI agent prove it is authorized to act and let users set programmatic rules and spending limits that are enforced automatically. Mastercard said those controls aim to make continuous programmatic transactions practical and affordable.

In its announcement, Mastercard wrote that autonomous agents can act on human intent, coordinate services and complete transactions created for users. The company said it validated priority use cases with partners and established common rules to speed industry adoption.

Early partners named by Mastercard include Aave Labs, Alchemy, Anchorage Digital, BVNK, Coinbase, MoonPay, OKX, Polygon, Ripple and Solana. Payments and cloud companies such as Checkout.com and Cloudflare are also involved. Tempo and Coinbase are developing open payments protocols called the Machine Payments Protocol and x402 to standardize agent-driven payments.

Jorn Lambert, Mastercard’s chief product officer, described AP4M as likely to enable a wide range of AI business models, saying machine payments can allow services to be bought and sold at very high volumes, very small values, and low latency.

The launch aligns with Mastercard’s broader expansion of crypto rails. The company already supports stablecoin-based card settlement for assets including USDC, PYUSD and RLUSD and works with platforms that offer crypto-linked cards. Mastercard said it is running an initiative with more than 100 partners to integrate blockchain and stablecoin flows with traditional payment rails for cross-border transfers, B2B payments, payouts and commerce. Mastercard agreed to acquire stablecoin startup BVNK in March and holds a New York State BitLicense.

Other payment networks and crypto projects are also developing AI-oriented payment infrastructure and agent permission systems. Mastercard framed AP4M as a way to address limits of existing rails for continuous, programmatic machine payments and for very small amounts.

The company did not disclose a broad rollout timeline or fee schedule for AP4M. Mastercard said the initial phase will focus on validating use cases and building interoperability with partners, with additional participants to be added over time.