Mastercard Unveils Agent Pay for Machines, Enabling AI Transaction Speed

Mastercard has introduced Agent Pay for Machines (AP4M), a new infrastructure layer that enables AI agents to execute, permission, and settle transactions at machine speed across its global network.

The system is designed for continuous, programmatic payments between AI agents at sub-cent values, removing the minimum-economically-viable-transaction-size constraint that has made high-frequency agent payments impractical until now.

AP4M includes credentialing and permissioning features that let an AI agent prove it is authorised to act on behalf of a user, and lets users set programmable rules and spending limits that are enforced automatically.

The service uses public blockchains, with initial chains selected as Polygon, Solana, and Base, allowing multiple parties to independently verify whether an agent is operating within its authorised scope.

More than 30 companies joined as early partners, including crypto-native participants such as Coinbase and OKX, and broader fintech and cloud participants like Stripe and Cloudflare.