Mastercard has unveiled Agent Pay, its new agentic payments technology to power commerce in the age of AI. Separately, PayPal has made its own agentic commerce play, with new tools for developers.
The card scheme is working with Microsoft to integrate AI technologies, including Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service and Microsoft Copilot Studio, with its own technology to develop so-called 'agentic commerce'.
This, says Mastercard, will lead to smarter and more personal payment experiences for consumers, merchants and issuers. Payments will be integrated into the tailored recommendations provided by generative AI conversation.
For example, someone planning a birthday party can chat with an AI agent to proactively curate a selection of outfits and accessories from local boutiques and online retailers based on their style, the venue’s ambience, and weather forecasts. Based on her preferences and feedback, the agent can make the purchase, and also recommend the best way to pay.
Or, a small textile enterprise will be able to use their AI agent to handle sourcing, optimise payment terms and manage logistics with an international supplier. From there, the AI agent can complete the cross-border purchase using a Mastercard virtual corporate card token and arrange for cost-effective, expedited delivery.
AI agents will need to be registered and verified before making payments on behalf of users and enhanced tokenisation technology will be used for payments initiated through conversational interfaces.
In addition to working with Microsoft, Mastercard is partnering IBM on B2B use cases and acquirers and checkout players like Braintree and Chekout.com on tokenisation.
Jorn Lambert, chief product officer, Mastercard, says: “The launch of Mastercard Agent Pay marks our initial steps in redefining commerce in the AI era, including new merchant interfaces to distinguish trusted agents from bad actors using agentic technology.
Meanwhile, PayPal says developers can now enable agentic AI experiences that allow customers to pay, track shipments, manage invoices, and more, all powered by PayPal and within an AI agent.
Alex Chriss, president and CEO, PayPal, says: “We are building with velocity and partnering with the biggest players in AI to empower our customers to access new opportunities in the AI economy.”
OpenAI is also jumping on the train, rolling out features that make it easier and faster to find, compare and buy products in its ChatGPT chatbot.