“Our agreement establishes collaboration across payments, joint services growth and AI transformation,” Miebach said during the Thursday (Oct. 29) earnings call.
Mastercard Agent Pay is the company’s infrastructure for enabling payments in agentic commerce, according to a page on its website.
PYMNTS reported Thursday that Miebach said during the call that Mastercard wants AI shopping agents to use tokenized versions of consumers’ chosen cards. He added that Mastercard Agent Pay, which incorporates tokenization, is being used by Shopify’s Shop Pay and is included in the new OpenAI agreement.
Asked by an analyst how Mastercard can drive adoption for Agent Pay, together with its partnerships with OpenAI and Shopify, Miebach said during the call that trust in the agent is key.
“One of the things that need to happen before this to really take off is consumers need to feel comfortable,” Miebach said. “Use of Agent Pay and having a registered agent is a key thing. The other thing is merchants need to be actually discoverable because then the other side of the transaction really isn’t working. That’s a piece that is slightly behind the first one.”
Mastercard announced another partnership Monday (Nov. 2), saying in a press release that the company and Tencent’s cross-border payment platform, TenPay Global, will explore new opportunities in agentic payments as well as greater cross-border payment interoperability.
Mastercard and TenPay Global signed a memorandum of understanding for a proposed collaboration that spans QR acceptance for international visitors in the Chinese mainland, remittances into the Weixin/WeChat ecosystem and AI-enabled commerce, according to the release.
In terms of AI-enabled commerce, Mastercard and TenPay Global will explore solutions such as Mastercard Agent Pay, Mastercard Agent Connect and Virtual C-Suite, per the release.
“Looking ahead, the collaboration will explore how the same principles of interoperability, trust and security can extend to agentic commerce, as AI agents reshape how consumers and businesses discover, decide and transact,” Mastercard said in the release.
