Mastercard, the global payments company, said Wednesday it launched Agent Pay for Machines, a service designed to let AI agents and software systems make permissioned payments across its global network.
The service is built for transactions that don't look like normal card payments. Instead of one person clicking buy, Mastercard says AI agents could trigger chains of background payments for services such as web hosting, data access, logistics, compute or checkout tools.
Mastercard
The crypto angle sits in the settlement layer. Mastercard said the service supports settlement across cards, accounts and stablecoins, making digital dollars part of the same machine-payment stack rather than a separate crypto lane.
- The company listed more than 30 initial participants and supporters, including Coinbase, OKX, RippleX, Solana Foundation, Polygon Labs, Aave Labs, and others.
Nina Coughlin, head of stablecoin business development at Coinbase, said the crypto exchange is working with Mastercard on an open framework that combines payment networks with programmable digital dollars and standards such as x402.
More context: X402 founder leaves Coinbase to start new company