Can an AI agent pay for me?

Yes, in early deployments. In 2026, Santander, Rabobank and ING completed AI agent payments in Europe with Mastercard Agent Pay, the first ones as pilots. The agent acts within limits set by the user and never receives the real card number.

How agent payments work

The user enrolls a card and gives the agent a mandate: a budget, a merchant category, a time window or a specific purchase. The card network issues a token dedicated to that agent, so the merchant receives a token and a cryptogram rather than the card number. When the agent buys, the issuer can check that the payment matches the mandate and that the agent is a recognized one.

What stays with the user

• Setting and changing the limits the agent must respect.
• Authentication when a purchase falls outside the mandate.
• Receipts and the usual dispute rights on card payments.
• Revoking the agent's access at any time.

Open questions

Liability when an agent buys the wrong item, how merchants recognize trusted agents, and how disputes are handled are still being defined by networks and regulators.

What it means for payment operators

Agent payments reach your merchants as tokenized card payments, often merchant-initiated or recurring. Network tokenization and stored credential handling are the building blocks your merchants need to accept them as the networks open these programs more widely.