Mastercard has entered a strategic partnership with OpenAI to work on agentic payments and broader AI initiatives.
The agreement was announced during Mastercard’s Q3 2026 earnings call. According to CEO Michael Miebach, the cooperation will cover payment technology, joint service development and the wider use of AI across the business. He also made clear that the partnership is not limited to Mastercard’s Agent Pay product.
The company expects AI agents to become more involved in online shopping. They could help consumers find products, compare options and complete purchases. Mastercard sees two main ways this could happen: transactions carried out directly between machines and more familiar e-commerce purchases in which an AI assistant helps the customer make decisions.
The company also sees opportunities beyond retail shopping. B2B card payments and microtransactions are among the areas that could benefit as agentic commerce develops.
For now, the market remains at an early stage. Miebach said current transaction volumes are still relatively small and do not yet have a significant impact on Mastercard’s overall business. However, the number of agentic transactions is increasing week by week. The company expects the upcoming holiday shopping season to bring more activity.
CFO Ling Hai added that AI-assisted shopping is unlikely to replace existing ways of buying goods and services. She expects commerce to become multimodal, with consumers moving between different ways of discovering and purchasing products.
Mastercard expands its agent payment products
Mastercard believes agentic commerce will need more than payment processing to gain wider acceptance. Consumers must be confident that an agent is acting with their permission, while banks and merchants require ways to identify and assess transactions initiated by AI systems.
The company has developed four products to address these requirements. Agent Pay uses tokenization to protect payment credentials and verify that an AI agent has been authorized by the buyer. It also allows merchants and card issuers to identify the agent involved in a transaction.
Verifiable Intent records the customer’s intended action within the payment process. Agentic Trust Intelligence, which Mastercard recently launched, gives banks and merchants tools to assess transactions initiated by different AI agents. Agent Connect focuses on the merchant side, helping businesses make their products and services discoverable to AI shopping tools.
Shopify is among the first companies to put Mastercard’s technology into use at scale. Its Shop Pay service combines Agent Pay with network tokens to protect payment credentials throughout the transaction. The service is already available on several agentic platforms, with further integrations expected.
Tokenization remains Mastercard’s preferred approach
During the earnings call, Miebach described the current agentic commerce landscape as fragmented. The industry has spent more than a year preparing for AI-driven payments, but different platforms and payment providers are still working toward a more consistent approach.
One issue concerns the use of one-time virtual card numbers. Mastercard does not see them as its preferred long-term solution for agentic payments. Miebach described virtual card numbers as a processor-level option that may serve as a temporary bridge. The company’s preferred approach is full tokenization through Agent Pay or an equivalent technology.
Merchant adoption presents another challenge. Some smaller businesses are still developing their basic digital capabilities, while larger retailers are already building their own AI agents. Mastercard sees payment service providers, software vendors and processors as important partners in connecting these businesses to agentic commerce.
Its Agent Pay and Agent Connect products are designed to reduce the need for merchants to build separate integrations for every payment partner. Mastercard is also adapting its MDES tokenization platform for agentic use cases and expects new pricing opportunities to emerge as these transactions become more common.
AI creates new demand for fraud and security tools
Mastercard’s work with OpenAI is part of a broader shift in how the company approaches artificial intelligence. Management expects AI to change not only the way people shop and pay but also the methods used by fraudsters. As criminals adopt similar tools, businesses may face new risks involving identity theft, fraud and weaknesses in digital systems.
Mastercard is already expanding its services in this area. Its Digital Risk Protection solution helps organizations identify vulnerabilities in their digital environments and has attracted nearly 800 enterprise customers within a few months of launch.
The company has also combined capabilities from RiskRecon and Recorded Future into a product focused on third-party risk. Mastercard reported fraud prevention and identity-related business with Standard Bank, Monzo and Starling Bank.
Despite these developments, management does not expect security-related revenue to rise sharply in the near term. The company sees AI as a source of additional demand for its services but expects adoption and business growth to develop over time.
