Mastercard has introduced Agent Pay for Machines, a tool designed to facilitate payments for AI agents when purchasing digital services. The solution leverages the x402 open protocol, which enables digital services to request online payments, and integrates it with the security infrastructure of the Mastercard network.
The company developed this tool to address the challenges AI agents face when interacting with multiple service providers. Traditionally, agents require individual accounts, API keys, or prepaid credits for each service. Mastercard aims to eliminate these requirements, allowing agents to pay only for the resources they consume during a task.
The system includes controls for trust and authorization, allowing users to define spending limits and permissions for their agents. Mastercard plans to demonstrate the technology at the Cloudflare Connect event this week using a marketing campaign scenario for the agency Hype.
In the demonstration, an AI agent uses the Agent Pay for Machines Discovery Service to identify providers and execute a task within a defined budget. The process involves nine payments across two independent merchants, all managed without separate invoices or account setups.
