How does an AI agent pay without my card number?
With a scoped token. The card network or PSP issues a token limited to one merchant, one amount or one agent, such as Mastercard’s Agentic Tokens or Stripe’s Shared Payment Tokens, built on network tokenization. The agent presents the token; the real card number never leaves the issuer and the token vault.
In detail
With a scoped token. The card network or PSP issues a token limited to one merchant, one amount or one agent, such as Mastercard’s Agentic Tokens or Stripe’s Shared Payment Tokens, built on network tokenization. The agent presents the token; the real card number never leaves the issuer and the token vault.
Scoped tokens
The credential is usually a scoped token: a payment token restricted to one merchant, one amount or one agent, derived from the same network tokens that secure wallets and card-on-file today. When the agent is ready to pay, a scoped token is created for that merchant and amount: an Agentic Token, a Shared Payment Token or a network token with agent indicators. The agent never holds the PAN.
Who issues them
Mastercard Agent Pay, announced in April 2025, introduced Agentic Tokens, which require agents to be registered and verified, let users define what an agent may buy, and make agent purchases identifiable to consumers, merchants and issuers. In Stripe and OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol, Stripe issues a Shared Payment Token scoped to a specific merchant and cart total; ChatGPT passes it to the merchant, who remains responsible for accepting the order, charging, tax and fulfillment.
More detail in our #PayDecoding episode on Agentic commerce.