Cards Make Their Case in an Agentic World

When AI agents start buying things, somebody has to settle the transaction. This week, the four largest card networks in the United States each made the same declaration: The Prompt Economy is their market, and they are building the rails for it.

Mastercard Says Cards Will Prevail in an Agentic World

In the Mastercard’s Q2 2026 earnings review, CFO Sachin Mehra said that the company is extending its trusted infrastructure to support a new era of AI-powered commerce, scaling Agent Pay through live agentic commerce transactions around the world. The review says Mastercard is working with more than 30 industry leaders on Agent Pay for Machines, which allows transactions to be permissioned, orchestrated and settled at machine speed across its network.

The review also said the planned acquisition of BVNK reinforces Mastercard’s digital assets strategy, supporting customers across virtually every form of money. On the earnings call, CEO Michael Miebach made the competitive argument directly. “We expect cards will prevail in an agentic world,” Miebach said, citing Mastercards’ scale, data access and risk management capabilities.

The review highlighted Verifiable Intent, developed with Google as part of Agent Pay, which allows any party to challenge a transaction they did not authorize, with existing chargeback processes resolving disputes. “The rise of agentic commerce brings about an entirely new class of payment use cases,” Miebach said. “It’s early days, but engagement across the globe is energizing.”

Visa Says Agentic Commerce Is a When, Not an If

Visa’s fiscal Q3 2026 earnings release says the company has deployed more than 150 AI-powered applications and is building a suite of products to make AI-initiated transactions secure and transparent, including Agent Score, Agent Directory, Token Assurance Framework and Visa Intelligent Commerce. The release says Visa announced new partnerships with OpenAI and Meta as part of its agentic commerce infrastructure buildout.

CEO Ryan McInerney told analysts the strategy is structural, not speculative. “Agentic commerce is a when, not an if,” McInerney said. “We’re building the products, the services, the protocols, ensuring that the ecosystem has what it takes, and this will happen, and it will be a positive tailwind for Visa.”

Visa’s release also mentioned that AI has already delivered 80% more code commits and 65% faster feature development inside Visa’s own operations, and that the company is directing investment from a recent workforce restructuring directly into stablecoin infrastructure and AI development.

American Express Says the Closed Loop Is the Competitive Edge

During the American Express’s Q2 2026 earnings release CEO Stephen Squeri told analysts that Amex’s closed-loop network gives it a structural advantage in agentic commerce that open-loop networks cannot easily replicate. “Our closed-loop system provides a significant advantage in agentic commerce by offering better fraud protection and data insights, which enhances trust and security for our customers,” Squeri said.

Their earnings release said that Amex has used AI in credit, risk and fraud for 15 to 16 years and is now deploying it to improve how unstructured data feeds into those decisions. AI is reducing coding cycle times by 30% to 40% across the technology organization. The company has also launched a servicing portal with embedded AI that reduces handle times for customer service representatives.

The release highlighted the Agentic Commerce Experiences developer kit, which will allow businesses to integrate Amex payment technology into their own agentic experiences. The release frames the closed-loop architecture as Amex’s answer to the trust and accountability question every agentic commerce deployment has to answer.

Capital One Says the Discover Network Is the Infrastructure Play

Capital One’s Q2 2026 earnings release says CEO Richard Fairbank told analysts the company continues to build momentum from the Discover acquisition, with the debit migration to the Discover network complete and described as a smashing success. The release says full Discover card originations are expected on Capital One’s technology stack by the end of Q3 2026.

Capital One said that for years it has been working backward from the dramatic transformation of the business marketplace with modern technology, data and AI. The Brex acquisition extends its reach into commercial spending and the enterprise procurement workflows where agentic AI is already taking hold.

The release framed the Discover integration as the foundation for Capital One’s AI strategy. With its own network, Capital One now controls the full data layer from transaction initiation to settlement, giving its AI models a richer, more continuous signal than any issuer dependent on third-party rails. In a landscape where data control is becoming the decisive competitive variable, the release argues, owning the network is not just a cost advantage. It is an AI advantage.

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