Mastercard launches Agent Pay for Machines with stablecoins

Mastercard on June 10 launched Agent Pay for Machines (AP4M), a payments infrastructure that lets AI agents and machines execute transactions across its global network. The system supports stablecoin settlement and programmable digital asset infrastructure and is designed for autonomous, machine-initiated payments, including microtransactions and continuous settlement flows.

AP4M offers multi-rail settlement that can route payments across cards, bank accounts and stablecoins. Mastercard described the platform as enabling AI agents to coordinate services and buy digital resources without human intervention, with transactions settling at machine speed. The system includes credentialing, transaction authorization, spending controls, auditability and verifiable intent verification to govern and trace machine-driven transactions.

Initial participants in the rollout include Coinbase, OKX, Polygon, RippleX, MoonPay, Aave Labs, Alchemy, BVNK and the Solana Foundation. Several partners highlighted regulated stablecoins as infrastructure for autonomous commerce, saying they make programmable payments practical for high-frequency automated agents. Coinbase wrote that AI agents are creating “entirely new forms of commerce” that require payments to move “at machine speed.”

Jorn Lambert, Mastercard’s chief product officer, described the potential scale of machine payments: “Machine payments can make it possible for services to be bought and sold among agents at fundamentally different scales than payments today.” Mastercard positioned AP4M as a verification and settlement layer rather than an AI platform provider, offering permissioning and controls for machines to transact independently.

The launch arrives amid U.S. policy discussions on stablecoin architecture and oversight following the passage of the GENIUS Act. Mastercard did not provide detailed timelines for broad commercial availability beyond the June 10 announcement; the list of crypto and blockchain partners indicates early integration work is under way.