Mastercard opened early access to Agent Pay for Machines on Oct. 20, giving developers the first versions of its buyer-side and seller-side APIs plus a toolkit and sandbox for testing, The Block’s James Hunt reported. The program lets AI agents pay other software for services, such as data or images, one request at a time.
The program is still in a pilot stage and isn’t commercially available, according to The Block. It follows pilots with Cloudflare, Ant International, BVNK, AIsa, Base and Coinbase.
Mastercard made the announcement as its chief product officer joined Cloudflare’s opening keynote at the Cloudflare Connect conference, Forkast reported.
How the demo worked
At Cloudflare Connect, the marketing agency Hype gave an AI agent a sample campaign for a protein bar launch, The Block reported. The agent bought social media research from AIsa and eight images from Cloudflare AI Gateway, making nine payments within a budget Hype had approved.
The agent paid using x402, a protocol incubated by Coinbase.
It’s named after the HTTP 402 “Payment Required” status code, which has existed on the web for decades but was rarely used. With x402, a website or API answers a request with a 402 code, and the agent signs a payment voucher within its approved budget. The seller checks the voucher before delivering the service.
Each company had a role. Coinbase Developer Platform supplied the agent’s wallet, and Base, Coinbase’s blockchain network, handled settlement onchain, according to The Block. BVNK, which Mastercard bought in August, processed payments in regular currency or stablecoins, digital tokens pegged to a currency like the dollar.
Mastercard said payment vouchers can be batched and redeemed later instead of settling each one separately, which matters when an agent makes many small payments. “Now AI agents need a way to pay for them,” the company said in a statement to The Block, referring to the services agents use.
Who gets in
Access is limited. Forkast reported that enrollment is by request only, that Mastercard hasn’t published criteria for who’s admitted or any pricing, and that the program’s documentation sits behind a login. Mastercard’s product page directs interested companies to their own Mastercard representative, Forkast said in a correction to its original story.
The program itself launched on June 10 with more than 30 companies, including Coinbase, Stripe, Adyen, Cloudflare and Ripple, according to Forkast. Mastercard said then that agent permissions and credentials would first be recorded on the Polygon, Solana and Base blockchains.
Forkast noted that Mastercard had committed in June to widening access later this year, and that no date for general availability has appeared since.
Raj Dhamodharan, Mastercard’s executive vice president for blockchain and digital asset products, described the demand in a June interview with CoinDesk, as quoted by Forkast. “There are already transactions happening,” he said. “There are already many declines happening because there is no payment option available.”
Mastercard isn’t the only card network building for agents. Visa announced a live pilot the same day in which an AI agent pays supplier invoices through business payment portals.
Source: The Block, James Hunt, “Mastercard opens early access to AI agent payments following pilots with Coinbase, Base and Cloudflare”
Additional sources: Forkast, “Agent Pay for Machines Has Been Request-Only Since October 20. The Criteria for Getting In Are Not Published.”
