Mastercard Agent Pay vs Visa Intelligent Commerce. How the card networks let AI agents pay.

The short answer

Mastercard Agent Pay and Visa Intelligent Commerce are the two card networks’ programmes for letting AI agents buy on a cardholder’s behalf. Both were announced in April 2025, both give the agent a tokenised credential instead of the card number, and both require the agent to be known to the network before it pays. They differ mostly in emphasis and in the pieces each has published so far.

Both sit on the card side of payments: an agent buying from a merchant. Neither is designed for bank-rail push payments such as supplier runs, payouts or payroll, which is where Flominzo AgentPay works.

Side by side

This table uses only what each network has published, as of September 2026. Both programmes are still rolling out; Visa’s own page describes its product as in the process of deployment.

What the two have in common

• No raw card numbers for agents. Both issue a token that can be scoped to the agent and revoked without replacing the card.
• Agents must be known. Mastercard registers and verifies agents; Visa gives merchants a way to verify them cryptographically.
• The cardholder sets the terms. Both describe the person’s consent and limits as the source of the agent’s authority.
• The network’s existing protections carry over. Tokenisation, authentication and dispute handling are what the networks already do; the programmes extend them to agents.

Where they differ

From what is published, Mastercard leads with the token and the agent registry: every agent is registered, and every transaction is tied to verified user intent. Visa leads with the merchant’s view: an open protocol a merchant can use to tell a legitimate agent from a bot, and controls the consumer sets. Mastercard has also extended the programme beyond shopping agents to machines and devices.

For a merchant or payment service provider, the practical difference today is integration: which token services your acquirer or processor supports, and whether your checkout can read the signals each network sends. Ask your acquirer; this is changing month by month.

How they relate to AP2 and ACP

The card programmes are about the credential and the network. The protocols sit above them. Google’s Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) defines signed mandates, an Intent Mandate and a Cart Mandate, and is designed for cards, real-time bank transfers and stablecoins; Mastercard is among its more than 60 partners. The Agentic Commerce Protocol from OpenAI and Stripe defines how an agent completes a checkout with a merchant, and is behind Instant Checkout in ChatGPT. A card payment from an agent may use a protocol for the conversation and a network token for the payment.

What neither covers

Both programmes solve an agent paying a merchant by card. A business letting agents move its own money needs something else:

• Push payments over bank rails: supplier invoices, payouts to sellers and contractors, payroll, refunds to bank accounts.
• Mandates your business defines, with approval tiers by amount and by reversibility, not only a cardholder’s spending limit.
• Proof in your own books: matching each agent payment to its intent, its mandate, the provider’s records and the bank statement.

That is the side Flominzo AgentPay works on: payment permissions and approvals for AI agents on bank rails and payouts, with every payment reconciled against independent evidence. It is not a card network, a wallet or a token service.

What merchants and PSPs can do now

1. Ask your acquirer or processor which agent token services it supports for each network, and on what timeline.
2. Decide how you will recognise agents at checkout: network signals, a signed request such as Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol, or both.
3. Review your fraud rules, which were tuned for people. An agent may check out in seconds from a data centre address.
4. Plan disputes: how you will show an order was placed within the cardholder’s instructions if they later dispute it.
5. Keep reconciliation in view. Agent orders still settle through your acquirer’s reports; make sure each one carries a reference you can match.

Questions to ask your acquirer

• Which of Mastercard’s and Visa’s agent programmes do you support today, and in which markets?
• How will agent-initiated transactions be flagged in authorisation messages and settlement reports?
• What changes in chargeback rights and evidence for agent purchases?
• Do you support AP2 or the Agentic Commerce Protocol at checkout, and through which partners?
• What extra fees, if any, apply to agent tokens?

If your business is the one paying

Most of the discussion is about shoppers’ agents buying from merchants. If your business wants agents to pay on its behalf, the question is different: not which card network the agent uses, but what the agent may pay, to whom, and how you will prove it afterwards. Corporate cards issued as agent tokens can suit small purchases and subscriptions. Supplier invoices, payouts and payroll usually move by bank transfer, where the control has to be a mandate in your own payment system and the proof has to come from your bank statement. That is the gap spending limits and approvals and agentic payments reconciliation address.

How an agent card payment works, step by step

1. The cardholder enrols. They choose an agent and let it use a card, and the network or issuer issues a token scoped to that agent, with the limits and conditions the cardholder sets.
2. The agent shops. It finds a product and builds a basket, confirming with the cardholder or acting within rules they set in advance.
3. The agent identifies itself. Through the network’s registry or a signed request, the merchant can tell a known agent from a bot.
4. The token is used. The merchant’s acquirer authorises the payment with the agent’s token rather than the card number.
5. It settles like any card payment, through the acquirer’s settlement reports, with the network’s dispute rules behind it.

Why tokens matter for agents

A token is a stand-in for the card number that only works in a defined context. For agents that matters in three ways: the agent never holds the real card details, the token can be limited to what the cardholder allowed, and it can be switched off without cancelling the card. It is the card world’s version of a mandate, and it is why both networks built their agent programmes on tokenisation rather than on sharing card details with agents.

Questions

Related

Sources

• Mastercard: Mastercard unveils Agent Pay (29 April 2025)
• Mastercard: Mastercard Agent Pay
• Visa: Visa Intelligent Commerce
• Visa: Find and Buy with AI, Visa unveils a new era of commerce (2025)
• Visa: Trusted Agent Protocol (GitHub)
• RFC 9421: HTTP Message Signatures
• Google Cloud: Announcing the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)
• Stripe: Stripe and OpenAI launch Instant Checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol (29 September 2025)