What is Mastercard Agent Pay? Agentic tokens explained

Mastercard Agent Pay is Mastercard's agentic payments program, announced in April 2025, that lets registered and verified AI agents pay on behalf of consumers and businesses. The agent pays with a Mastercard Agentic Token, a tokenized credential that builds on the tokenization Mastercard already uses for contactless wallets, card-on-file and Payment Passkeys, so the agent never needs the card number. Merchants can recognize trusted agents through Web Bot Auth and receive the agentic token in their existing card payment fields.

The program requires trusted AI agents to be registered and verified before they can make payments. Mastercard: Agent Pay launch press release For the general model of agents that shop and pay, see what agentic commerce is.

What has Mastercard announced for Agent Pay?

Mastercard has extended the program in steps:

Sources: launch, September 2025 tools, acceptance framework, UAE, Santander, Verifiable Intent, Agent Pay for Machines.

In September 2026 Mastercard added Agent Connect for merchants; Mastercard Agent Connect covers that merchant-side layer.

What is a Mastercard agentic token?

An agentic token is the credential an agent presents instead of a card number. Mastercard says Agentic Tokens "build upon proven tokenization capabilities" that already power mobile contactless payments, secure card-on-file and Mastercard Payment Passkeys. Mastercard: Agent Pay launch

What makes it "agentic" is the context around it. A standard network token protects the card number in a digital payment. An agentic token also has to show that a specific registered agent is involved and that the consumer gave it permission. Mastercard's merchant developer guide for agentic commerce describes tokens that can be scoped, for example as single-use, merchant-specific or time-limited, depending on the authorization. Mastercard Developers: Level 1 agentic commerce guide

For the merchant, the token arrives through familiar rails. Under the acceptance framework, a trusted agent can use the merchant's existing checkout form to submit a Dynamic Token Verification Code, an agentic token formatted for standard card payment fields. Mastercard: agentic token framework

How does Mastercard register and verify agents?

Mastercard's framework starts by registering and verifying AI agents before they may transact on its network. Verification at the merchant uses Web Bot Auth: Mastercard partnered with Cloudflare to support it in Agent Pay, describing it as built on the IETF RFC 9421 HTTP message signature standard and as a no-code way to cryptographically verify agent identity. Merchants can apply it at the CDN layer, so they verify the agent without deploying new code. Mastercard: agentic token framework

The September 2025 release added Agent Sign-Up, described as a simple way for developers using Mastercard's Agent Toolkit to identify their agents and access Mastercard's AI-enabled products. The same release said Mastercard is working with the FIDO Alliance Payments Working Group on a verifiable credential standard for payments that confirms details such as amount, retailer and product. Mastercard: September 2025 announcement

Registration tells a merchant who the agent is; it does not say what the consumer asked for. Mastercard's Verifiable Intent, co-developed with Google, addresses that second question. Mastercard describes it as linking identity, intent and action into a single privacy-preserving record, aligned with Google's AP2 and UCP and designed to be protocol agnostic, with the specification published as open source. Mastercard: Verifiable Intent The wider identity problem is covered in agentic payments need an identity control plane.

How do agentic tokens relate to MDES?

MDES, the Mastercard Digital Enablement Service, is Mastercard's tokenization service. Its developer documentation describes the core operations a token requestor uses: Tokenize to supply card details and receive a token and Token Unique Reference, Transact to obtain transaction credentials, Notify Token Updated for lifecycle events, and Delete. A Token Requestor Identifier service automates onboarding of token requestors. Mastercard Developers: MDES getting started, Mastercard Developers: MDES

Mastercard's public Agent Pay material says agentic tokens build on its existing tokenization. It does not spell out, in the pages reviewed here, which MDES token requestor role an agent platform takes or which MDES fields carry agent identity. Treat those as questions for your Mastercard or acquirer contact, not assumptions. The token concepts that do carry over, such as lifecycle events and PCI scope, are explained in network tokenization: lifecycle, portability and PCI scope.

Which partners has Mastercard named?

Only partners Mastercard itself names in its newsroom are listed here. Being named is not the same as a live integration in every market.

Where is Mastercard Agent Pay live?

• United States. In September 2025 Mastercard said all US Mastercard cardholders would be enabled for Agent Pay by the holiday season, with global rollout to follow.
• UAE. Mastercard's EEMEA newsroom described the November 2025 launch with Majid Al Futtaim as a milestone in bringing agentic payments into the mainstream.
• Europe. In March 2026 Santander and Mastercard said they completed Europe's first live end-to-end payment executed by an AI agent, run in a controlled environment through Santander's live payments infrastructure, with PayOS handling orchestration.

"Enabled at the network" and "available in your app" are different things. A cardholder still needs an agent platform, an issuer and a merchant that support the flow, so check each before planning a launch.

How does Agent Pay compare with Visa Intelligent Commerce?

Both programs swap the card number for a token scoped to an agent and use Web Bot Auth so merchants can verify agents. Mastercard's public language puts agent registration first and treats intent as a separate record; Visa's centers on a passkey-approved payment instruction. What Visa Intelligent Commerce is explains the Visa side.

FAQ

What is Mastercard Agent Pay in simple terms?

A Mastercard program that lets a registered AI agent pay for you with an agentic token instead of your card number, within the permission you gave.

What is a Mastercard agentic token?

A tokenized Mastercard credential issued for agent-initiated payments. Mastercard says it builds on the tokenization behind contactless wallets, card-on-file and Payment Passkeys.

Do merchants need to rebuild checkout to accept Mastercard Agent Pay?

Mastercard says merchants can verify agents at the CDN layer with Web Bot Auth and receive agentic tokens through existing card payment fields. Richer integrations are optional.

Is Mastercard Agent Pay available in the UAE and Europe?

Mastercard announced a UAE launch with Majid Al Futtaim in November 2025 and a live European transaction with Santander in March 2026. Check with your issuer and agent platform for current availability.

Is Mastercard Agent Pay the same as MDES?

No. MDES is Mastercard's tokenization service; Agent Pay is the agent payments program whose agentic tokens build on Mastercard's tokenization capabilities.