Mastercard has announced a broad strategic partnership with OpenAI aimed at advancing agentic commerce, according to CEO Michael Miebach. The collaboration was detailed during the company’s earnings call on Thursday, Oct. 29, where Miebach described the agreement as extending beyond basic payment processing to include joint services growth and artificial intelligence transformation.
OpenAI and Agent Pay Integration
The partnership centers on Mastercard’s Agent Pay infrastructure, which the company describes as the system enabling payments through AI agents. Miebach stated that Mastercard intends for AI shopping agents to utilize tokenized versions of consumers’ selected credit cards. The company confirmed that Agent Pay, which incorporates tokenization technology, is currently utilized by Shopify’s Shop Pay service.
During the earnings call, an analyst asked Miebach how Mastercard plans to drive adoption for Agent Pay alongside its partners. Miebach emphasized that consumer trust is the primary requirement for the technology to succeed. He noted that users must feel comfortable with the process and that registering an agent is a key component of building that trust.
“One of the things that need to happen before this to really take off is consumers need to feel comfortable,” Miebach said. He added that merchant discoverability is the second critical factor, noting that the transaction side of the equation is currently lagging behind the consumer adoption side.
Tencent Collaboration on Cross-Border Payments
On Monday, Nov. 2, Mastercard expanded its agentic commerce efforts with a separate announcement involving Tencent. The company signed a memorandum of understanding with TenPay Global, Tencent’s cross-border payment platform, to explore new opportunities in agentic payments and cross-border interoperability.
The proposed collaboration covers several areas, including QR code acceptance for international visitors in the Chinese mainland and remittances into the Weixin or WeChat ecosystem. The agreement also outlines exploration of AI-enabled commerce solutions, specifically mentioning Mastercard Agent Pay, Mastercard Agent Connect, and Virtual C-Suite.
In a press release regarding the Tencent deal, Mastercard stated that the collaboration will examine how principles of interoperability, trust, and security can apply to agentic commerce. The company highlighted that AI agents are reshaping how consumers and businesses discover products, make decisions, and complete transactions.
These dual partnerships mark a significant push by Mastercard to integrate its payment infrastructure into the emerging field of AI-driven commerce. The company is positioning its tokenization and agent payment technologies as foundational elements for future digital transactions involving autonomous software agents.
Source: PYMNTS
