Payment technology company Worldline and banking group ING said they have completed what the companies describe as Europe’s first live end-to-end agentic payment transaction in a production environment using the Mastercard network.
The transaction was announced at the Money20/20 Europe event on June 2. According to the companies, the payment was executed between an ING cardholder and a merchant in the Netherlands and used infrastructure operating across the Netherlands and Belgium.
The companies said the transaction involved an AI-powered merchant agent initiating a purchase after receiving approval from the customer. Authentication and authorisation were handled through existing payment security mechanisms, with ING acting as the issuing bank and Worldline processing the transaction across its issuing and acquiring platforms.
The demonstration focused on what the payments industry refers to as “agentic commerce,” where software agents perform parts of the shopping and payment process on behalf of consumers within predefined limits.
In the example presented by the companies, an ING customer searched online for a wedding anniversary gift. A merchant AI agent selected concert tickets within the customer’s stated budget, displayed the options, and completed the payment after receiving confirmation from the customer.
Worldline said the transaction included identifiers showing that the payment had been initiated through an agentic process. The issuing bank retained visibility and authorisation control over the payment.
“Agentic commerce is no longer theoretical, it is production-ready today. Powered by Worldline’s platform, this transaction proves that we are fully enabled across acceptance, acquiring, authentication and issuer processing at a pan-European level. Together with ING and Mastercard, we are making agentic payments a seamless and secure reality happening,” said Madalena Cascais Tomé, Member of the Executive Committee at Worldline.
Worldline reported revenue of approximately €4 billion in 2025 and said it serves more than 1.2 million customers across Europe. The company operates payment processing and transactional infrastructure for merchants and financial institutions.
ING, which employs more than 60,000 people globally, provides retail and wholesale banking services in more than 100 countries through ING Bank and its affiliated operations.
“We’re excited about this concrete move towards shaping a future where seamless, intelligent interactions redefine the way we engage with banking and online shopping. For ING, this collaboration is the perfect opportunity to lay a solid foundation for our continued role as a trusted partner in an increasingly agentic future in banking,” said Hans Overeem, Head of Payments at ING Netherlands.
The transaction also involved Mastercard, which has been developing its Agent Pay framework for AI-enabled payment orchestration and authentication.
“We are seeing the next evolution of digital commerce, where trusted agents can act on behalf of consumers in a secure and transparent way,” said Brice van de Walle, Executive Vice President, Core Payments Europe at Mastercard.
According to the companies, the pilot was designed to test operational workflows for agentic payments across multiple European markets and payment participants. The companies said future use cases could include recurring payments and delegated purchases operating within predefined consumer permissions.
