Mastercard said on Oct. 21 that it has opened early access to its AI agent payment system, Agent Pay for Machines, and demonstrated live transactions at the Cloudflare Connect conference. The system is built on the open x402 protocol and is designed to let AI agents discover services, negotiate transaction terms, and complete payments on their own while staying within spending limits set by humans. When an AI agent reaches a paid service and receives a "402 Payment Required" response, it generates a digitally signed payment credential that the service provider can verify before delivering the service. Mastercard said those credentials can be redeemed in batches, allowing AI agents to handle multiple payments quickly. In the demo, a marketing agent planned an advertising campaign for a protein bar product and completed nine payments to two separate merchants under a single budget, without registering separate accounts or managing separate bills. Coinbase provided wallet services, Base handled onchain settlement, and BVNK supported fiat or stablecoin payments and settlement through Mastercard’s Global Money Platform. Mastercard also said it will provide buyer and seller APIs, SDKs, and a sandbox for developers, and has already launched end-to-end pilots with Cloudflare, AWS, Coinbase, and others.
Mastercard said on Oct. 21 that it has opened early access to Agent Pay for Machines, its payment system for AI agents, and demonstrated live transactions at the Cloudflare Connect conference.
The system lets AI agents discover services, negotiate transaction terms, and complete payments on their own, while remaining subject to spending caps preset by humans. It is built on the open x402 protocol. When an AI agent accesses a paid service and receives a "402 Payment Required" response, it generates a digitally signed payment credential, which the service provider verifies before delivering the service.
Mastercard said the credentials can be redeemed in batches, allowing AI agents to complete multiple transactions quickly.
In the demonstration, a marketing agent planned an advertising campaign for a protein bar product and completed nine payments to two independent merchants under a single budget, without needing to register separate accounts or handle separate billing flows.
Coinbase provided wallet services, Base handled onchain settlement, and BVNK supported fiat or stablecoin payments and settlement through Mastercard Global Money Platform.
Mastercard also said it will provide buyer and seller APIs, software development kits, and a testing environment for developers. The company has already started end-to-end pilots with Cloudflare, Amazon Web Services, Coinbase, and other organizations.
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