Mastercard announced a partnership with Alchemy to launch a consumer-facing AI agent payment option. Cardholders can hand a virtual Mastercard to an AI agent to make online purchases without requiring human approval for each transaction, configuring parameters like spending caps and merchant restrictions themselves. The system relies on agentic tokens, dynamic one-time-use or session-limited credentials designed to secure machine-initiated transactions. According to Visa research cited in the article, only 23% of US consumers trust AI to manage their payments. Both Mastercard and Visa are developing parallel infrastructures for AI-driven payments and collaborating with Ant International on frameworks for verifying and monitoring AI agents.
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