Mastercard Expands Agentic Commerce With New Trust Services
Mastercard Incorporated MA is expanding Agent Pay with new trust and intelligence services designed to help banks and merchants assess AI-led transactions more accurately. The first tool, now entering U.S. testing, assigns a probability score indicating whether a transaction was initiated by an AI agent. Over time, the score will incorporate more data, helping banks and merchants make better-informed decisions about whether to approve a transaction.
This becomes more relevant as agentic commerce moves closer to mainstream adoption. Industry projections cited in the announcement suggest that one in 10 consumers could routinely use AI agents to make purchases by 2030. As AI agents make purchases across multiple merchants, their activity may look different from typical human transactions, increasing the risk of legitimate purchases being flagged as suspicious.
The opportunity also extends beyond payment authorization. Using identity, fraud and transaction data could help MA improve payment security, make better transaction decisions and reduce unnecessary declines. Partnerships with Cloudflare and Skyfire could provide more information to identify trusted agents and confirm the purpose of transactions.
The near-term earnings impact is likely limited, but the longer-term opportunity is clearer. Better transaction decisions could help reduce legitimate purchase declines and support payment volume growth. As AI agents become another way to make purchases, demand for fraud and security tools could create new opportunities for Mastercard’s value-added services.
How Are Competitors Faring?
Some of MA’s competitors in the payment space are Visa Inc. V and PayPal Holdings, Inc. PYPL.
Visa is also building infrastructure for agentic commerce through its Visa Intelligent Commerce portfolio. Its offerings include Agent Scoring, an Agentic Registry and a Trusted Agent Protocol designed to verify AI agents and support secure transactions. This gives Visa a similar focus on trust and security as payment networks prepare for AI-initiated transactions.
PayPal is taking a more merchant-focused approach, offering agentic-commerce services that allow AI agents to discover products, manage shopping carts and complete purchases across online stores. This could expand PayPal’s role in AI-driven transactions as more merchants adopt agentic commerce.
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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
