preferred on
Points of Focus
- Agent Connect links merchants, AI agents and payment providers through one integration.
- Agents can access approved product data, build carts and complete authorized payments.
- Samsung, Trip.com, Global Payments, Nexi and Getnet are among companies exploring Agent Connect.
Mastercard launched Agent Connect on Sept. 9, creating a network through which merchants can expose approved product information to AI agents, let those agents prepare purchases and connect the resulting transactions to payment providers.
Participating agents can retrieve product details and availability, recommend items for a shopper’s cart, confirm final prices, taxes, shipping costs and fulfillment terms, and complete a user-authorized payment. Mastercard said secure credentials from any payment network can be used, while Mastercard card transactions can also use its Agent Pay infrastructure.
Agent Connect arrives as payment companies and crypto developers build transaction infrastructure for software agents. Coinbase’s x402 protocol embeds stablecoin payments into HTTP requests, while Fetch.ai has integrated Skyfire for agent payments and identity.
Agent Connect links catalogs, carts and payments
A merchant participating in Agent Connect can make selected product information available to external agents while retaining control over pricing, fulfillment, business rules, customer relationships and product representation.
Mastercard describes the system as a one-to-many connection model. A merchant can connect once and become accessible to participating agent platforms and commerce services as the network expands. Eligible merchants will also have access to no-code onboarding options.
In January, Mastercard joined Google on Universal Commerce Protocol and said it was collaborating across Agent Payments Protocol, Agent2Agent and OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol.
Crypto infrastructure is taking a similar route at the application layer. Base MCP connects AI assistants with wallets, DeFi protocols and onchain applications. Agent Connect extends that connectivity into merchant commerce, where agents also need live catalogs, order data and payment rails.
Agent Pay handles authorization behind the purchase
Mastercard introduced Agent Pay in April 2025, using tokenized credentials and registered agents to identify transactions initiated through AI systems. In March 2026, Mastercard and Google introduced Verifiable Intent, an open, protocol-agnostic trust layer that creates cryptographic evidence of what a user authorized an agent to do.
Mastercard expanded the stack again in June with Agent Pay for Machines, a service for programmatic machine-driven transactions. It supports credentialed agents, authorization rules and spending limits, plus settlement across cards, accounts and stablecoins. More than 30 companies were named as initial participants or supporters, including Coinbase, Stripe, Aave Labs, Ripple, Skyfire and Solana Foundation.
The expansion comes alongside broader payment-industry efforts such as Visa’s Zerohash integration and forecasts that stablecoin-card spending could reach $50 billion annually by 2028.
Samsung and Trip.com explore the network
Agent Connect will launch first in the United States. Samsung, Trip.com, Global Payments, Nexi, Getnet and several other companies are among those exploring integrations with the network.
Anthropic’s commerce-agent blueprint will be available through Agent Suite for Merchants, allowing businesses to build Claude-based shopping agents using Mastercard commerce intelligence, controls, personalization and payment capabilities.
The partnerships give Mastercard an initial distribution layer for Agent Connect across merchants, payment providers and consumer-facing platforms.
Share
Most read articles
