Mastercard’s AI agent demo makes nine payments on one budget

At Cloudflare’s Connect conference, Mastercard paid two different sellers nine times using a single approved budget and an AI agent.

According to a news release from Mastercard, the agent does not need separate accounts, API keys, or invoices.

The company also provided early access to Agent Pay for Machines, which is the engine that powered the demo. It allows AI agents to find and pay for services based on the rules set by the user.

The AI agent purchased research and eight images

Hype is a marketing firm that instructed the AI agent to make a sample campaign for the launch of a protein bar.

Inside the budget that Hype approved, the AI agent bought social media research from AIsa and eight campaign pictures from Cloudflare’s AI Gateway.

In charge of the demo was Jorn Lambert from Mastercard. Mastercard said the agent was run on an agent platform, like Amazon Bedrock AgentCore.

Mastercard showed off Agent Pay for Machines for the first time in June. Mastercard’s sales pitch says that AI agents buy things. They buy data from one source, access to models from another, and computing power from a third.

Most of the time, paid services need an account, an API key, or a way for each provider to bill them. When an agent picks up services in the middle of a job, it doesn’t have time to set up the accounts first.

x402 is an open protocol used by Agent Pay for Machines. Coinbase incubated it.

The 402 in x402 is essentially a web server’s way of saying “Payment Required” before providing a service.

The AI agent has to sign a digital voucher, which is a safe promise to pay up to the approved limit. This voucher is checked by the service provider before the service is supplied.

Off-chain transactions happen at machine speed. Providers can collect vouchers that can be redeemed later in batches.

Authorizing spending is the hard part of Mastercard’s design.

The business tells the AI agent what to do and how much money it can spend. There are limits on what the agent can do.

Coinbase, Base, and BVNK settle in fiat or stablecoins

The agent was funded through Coinbase’s Developer Platform wallet system. Base was the on-chain settlement network.

The agent wallet was from BVNK, the stablecoin infrastructure company that Mastercard bought in August. It processed payments in fiat or stablecoins through Mastercard’s Global Money Platform. Sellers were paid in the currency, token, or rail of their choice.

Before early access, end-to-end pilots with seven companies are done: Cloudflare, Ant International, AIsa, Base, BVNK, Coinbase, and Hype.

Mastercard is giving developers the first version of its buyer and seller APIs, along with a toolkit, a sandbox, and documentation.

The project is still in pilot and is not yet commercially available.

“The web gave software a way to communicate. APIs gave software a way to use services. Now AI agents need a way to pay for them. That’s what we’re building,” Mastercard said.

According to Cryptopolitan, Base handled more than 138 million x402 transactions during a reporting period in 2026.

Only 0.6% to 7.5% of the x402 commerce screened seemed to be really agent driven. Real agents and scheduled scripts leave the same trail behind them.

Visa, Mastercard, and Ant International are working on a framework named “Know Your Agent.” It will help people figure out which AI agents they can trust and who is liable if something goes wrong with one of them.