Agentic AI: Credit card giants make their move

In a development that will echo across industries, Visa and Mastercard are betting consumers will trust agents to make a variety of decisions.

Agentic AI’s march toward adoption is looking more like a sprint than a slog.

Mere weeks after Amazon announced its breakthrough Buy for Me feature that lets consumers shop third parties within the retail giant’s app, Mastercard has rolled out Agent Pay, which the company says will allow consumers to farm out purchase decisions—in certain situations and with guardrails firmly in place. Not to be outdone, Visa introduced a similar initiative called Intelligent Commerce the next day.

In a hypothetical example, here’s how Mastercard says its system will work. Someone planning a milestone birthday chats with an AI agent to “proactively curate” outfits and accessories from local boutiques and online retailers. Based on the consumer’s preferences and feedback, the agent is empowered to make purchases.

On the business side, Mastercard highlights its vision through the example of a small textile company working with an international supplier and deploying its AI agent to “handle sourcing, optimize payment terms and manage logistics”—and to complete the cross-border payment and arrange delivery.

The coming AI tidal wave

One open question is: How willing are consumers to let AI close the deal?

Our New minds, new markets research found consumers hesitant to use AI in the purchase of financial products and services. Digital payments, however, stand out as the strongest-performing product category. For consumers, making purchases using digital payment methods feels seamless and familiar. Unlike complex products such as loans or investments, digital payments are part of consumers' everyday routines, making them more comfortable with relinquishing certain decisions to AI.

Mastercard and Visa may be on to something: Our research also shows that within five years, AI-friendly consumers will control over half of all consumer purchasing activity—and that’s just the beginning.

As we say in that report, “The rise of agent-driven interactions will require dynamic, adaptable systems and processes capable of managing agent autonomy at scale, as well as flexible technology stacks and new business models aligned with the rise of personalized, agent-led transactions.”

Payment tech stacks’ new look

For a window into the future of payment tech stacks—especially agentic payments—look no further than PayPal. The fintech giant’s pioneering efforts include developer tools to enable AI-led shopping experiences that let customers pay, track shipments and manage invoices directly through an AI agent. It has also struck up strategic partnerships: Google Cloud's AI Shopping Companion helps merchants create personalized shopping journeys by integrating Gemini-powered chat with the commerce capabilities of PayPal and other retailers. At last week’s PayPal Dev Days, Amazon Web Services showcased how businesses can convert ideas into digital campaigns using agentic workflows integrated with PayPal's Agent Toolkit.

We’ll continue to see more investments in this area as agentic AI becomes an integral part of payments and commerce.

What’s next for consumer guard rails

As our survey findings underscore, consumers are skeptical about AI when it comes to their finances. Visa and Mastercard are taking big steps to reassure them.

Mastercard’s Agent Pay is built on tokenization, the data-protection method already in use for contactless payments, secure card-on-file, and payment passkeys, as well as programmable payments like recurring expenses and subscriptions. 

Additionally, Agent Pay requires registration and authentication for agents, allows consumers generous control over what the agents can do, and most importantly, protects against fraud and malicious actors.

Visa, too, is mindful of distrust issues. As chief product and strategy officer Jack Forestell said in a statement, “Each consumer sets the limits, and Visa helps manage the rest.”

All good moves. We’ll be waiting to see the guardrails erected for dispute management, one of payments’ most challenging areas due to complex rules, high operational costs, fraud risks, and the need to balance customer service with merchant protection. It’s a vital area, and we’ve partnered with ServiceNow with a dispute management solution aimed at mid-market banks.

In the meantime, it’s fascinating to observe Mastercard and Visa as they make bold moves to cement their positions as payments leaders.