Mastercard launches Agent Pay for AI payments on Polygon

Mastercard has unveiled Agent Pay for Machines, or AP4M, a protocol designed to let AI agents send and settle payments across its global network, including microtransactions worth less than a cent. The system is aimed at machine-to-machine commerce, where software agents can autonomously buy services from other agents at high speed rather than relying on person-initiated point-of-sale or e-commerce transactions. Mastercard said AP4M can support workflows such as an AI agent building a flower shop's online presence by purchasing a domain, hosting, images and checkout tools within a preset budget. The company said more than 30 early partners have joined the effort, including Stripe, Coinbase, Cloudflare, Polygon, OKX and Ant International. A notable design choice is that permissions granted by humans to AI agents are recorded on public blockchains rather than in a private database, with Polygon, Solana and Base selected initially so multiple parties can verify whether an agent is acting within approved limits. Polygon said the project is intended to help establish common rules for agent-to-agent transactions and support always-on settlement. Chief product officer Jorn Lambert said machine payments could enable buying and selling among agents at much higher volumes, smaller values and lower latency than current payment flows. He also said AP4M is not expected to be a major revenue driver next year, but could become a meaningful new addressable market over the next five years. The launch comes as Visa, Stripe and Google have introduced their own agent payment tools or standards over the past year, even though volumes remain a small share of broader commercial activity.