Mastercard rolls out AI payment option as card companies race for standards

Mastercard just gave your future AI assistant a wallet. The payments giant announced a partnership with Alchemy to launch a consumer-facing agentic payments option, letting cardholders hand a virtual Mastercard to an AI agent and authorize it to buy things online without requiring a human thumbs-up before every purchase. Users set the guardrails. Spending caps, merchant restrictions, and optional pre-checkout approval are all baked in. How the system actually works The new option builds on Mastercard’s existing Agent Pay program, which the company originally introduced in April 2025 to bring tokenization into AI-driven commerce. At the core of the system are what Mastercard calls “agentic tokens,” dynamic credentials designed specifically for machine-initiated transactions. Rather than storing a static card number, each AI agent receives a one-time-use or session-limited credential. That means if the token gets intercepted, it’s essentially worthless for any subsequent transaction. Cardholders can configure their agents to operate within tight parameters. Want your AI to only buy groceries from two approved retailers and never exceed $200 per week? Done. Need it to book flights but...