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Technology

Mastercard opens early access to Agent Pay for Machines at Cloudflare Connect

Mastercard has opened early developer access to Agent Pay for Machines, letting autonomous AI agents buy digital services programmatically inside human-set spending limits — showcased at this week's Cloudflare Connect event.

By James Calloway · · 2 min read

Illustration of an AI agent sending payment tokens between servers and a credit card over a digital network
Illustration: Flip News (AI-generated)

Mastercard has opened early developer access to Agent Pay for Machines, a tool that lets autonomous artificial intelligence agents purchase digital services programmatically. The company is showcasing its capabilities at the Cloudflare Connect event this week PYMNTS.

The offering builds on x402, an open payment protocol initiated by Coinbase, and combines it with the Mastercard network. It supports cards, bank accounts and stablecoins, with programmable spending controls, agent credentialing and Verifiable Intent — Mastercard’s standard for recording what a user authorised an agent to do Crypto Briefing Mesh.

The showcase centres on a demonstration with Hype, a marketing agency running a protein-bar campaign. The agent made nine payments to two merchants — AIsa and Cloudflare AI Gateway — out of a single pre-approved budget, with no separate accounts, API keys or invoices. “The agent paid only for what it used, while Hype stayed in control,” Mastercard said PYMNTS.

Developers in early access receive buyer-side and seller-side APIs, a broader developer toolkit and a testing sandbox. The programme remains in a pilot phase, with Mastercard collecting developer feedback before any wider commercial rollout Crypto Briefing.

Agent Pay for Machines was first added to Mastercard’s Agent Pay framework on 10 June 2026, with more than 30 initial participants including Adyen, Checkout.com, Cloudflare, Rain, Stripe and Tempo Mesh. Rivals are building competing rails, including Visa Intelligent Commerce. Mastercard’s September 2026 report forecasts more than one in ten online shoppers could routinely use AI agents to buy on their behalf by 2030 Mastercard.

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