Mastercard chief expects AI agents to add card payments

On Thursday, Michael Miebach, chief executive of Mastercard, told analysts that AI agents will add card transactions. Miebach expects this to increase in the holidays. Net revenue increased 14% to $9.81 billion in the September quarter. Miebach also told them that many merchants are not prepared. Mastercard serves many banks, processors and sellers, and Miebach says that this makes the work more difficult.

How it works

A shopper can give a software agent the task to find goods on the web. Mastercard launched Agent Suite in January and Agent Connect at the end of the summer to help merchants. Third-party payment-service providers will help merchants prepare, Miebach says.

The numbers

The quarter had these results:

• Net revenue: $9.81 billion, an increase of 14%.
• Net income: $4.65 billion, an increase of 17%.
• Gross dollar volume: $2.95 trillion, an increase of 7%.

What is not known

Miebach gave no numbers for agent transactions. Miebach says the industry is a patchwork. Merchants are at different steps, and some merchants cannot be found by agents. Some persons argue about if agents can buy goods or only find them.

Insight: Mastercard buys the guard and the new rail

Mastercard paid $2.65 billion for Recorded Future, a company for risk intelligence, and $1.8 billion for BVNK, a stablecoin platform. Its Agent Pay tool accepts card or stablecoin payments from agents. This reads as a plan to hold the fraud check and the payment rail, for each type of agent payment. Amex protects a card member from errors only for agents that it registered. Each network can set different rules.