Mastercard Unveils Agent Pay For Machines As Ripple Readies Itself For AI Payments

Mastercard has rolled out Agent Pay for Machines (AP4M), a new payment framework to allow artificial intelligence (AI) agents to complete purchases and transactions on behalf of consumers. The global payments provider tapped Ripple to join the new framework, with the blockchain firm rolling out its agentic payment toolkit.

Mastercard wants AI to become a consumer

According to an official announcement, Mastercard noted that the Agent Pay for Machines will support high-speed transactions payments for AI agents. Particularly, Mastercard is tipping the new framework to handle high-volume, low value transactions by AI agents round-the-clock.

Apart from its focus on microtransactions and speed, AP4M will support programmable payments. The new service leans on Mastercard’s Agent Pay program rolled out in 2025 that racked up impressive levels of success.

“Machine payments can make it possible for services to be bought and sold among agents at fundamentally different scales than payments today - very high volumes, very small values,very fast and at extremely low latency,” said Jorn Lambert, Mastercard’s chief product officer.

Under the hood, the Agent Pay for Machines confirms the authenticity of every agent, approving it to transact across ecosystems. Furthermore, participants can set spending limits and other authorization rules to ensure the agent spends within established parameters.

Per the announcement, the new payment system supports stablecoins and multi-rail settlement across cards. Mastercard noted that the new framework will create the perfect ecosystem for a  “superbloom of AI business models.”

AI agent markets size forecast. Source: Precedence Research

Launching with a raft of key ecosystem players

Mastercard’s Agent Pay for Machine launched with a litany of early adopters from ranging from traditional finance, to crypto-native firms. The crypto-native firms that made Mastercard’s exclusive list include Anchorage Digital, Polygon, Ripple, MoonPay, Solana, Coinbase, Alchemy, and Aave among others.While several crypto-native companies have begun tinkering with agentic payments, Ripple has surged ahead with a streak of product rollouts.

Alongside the Mastercard announcement, Ripple rolled out a new agentic payment toolkit for developers exploring autonomous payment systems on the XRP Ledger.

Ripple disclosed that the XRP Ledger and RLUSD offer the perfect conditions for agentic payments, teeing it up for success in Mastercard’s new framework. Markus Infanger, senior vice president of RippleX, said:

Other early adopters include internet giants Cloudflare and Checkout.com with Ant International, Lovable, Turnkey, and Tempo joining the initial cohort.