Mastercard and PrivatBank have completed Ukraine's first agentic payment transaction through the Mastercard Agent Pay framework.
The transaction was executed through Agent Pay, a Mastercard framework that integrates AI agents into the payment flow as identified and authenticated participants. Rather than operating as unverified intermediaries, agents within the framework must be identified, registered, verified, and authenticated before any transaction can proceed. The milestone confirms PrivatBank's technical and operational readiness to support this model and provides a basis for further development of agentic commerce in Ukraine.
How the Agent Pay framework works
Agentic commerce describes a model in which AI-powered agents act on behalf of consumers to carry out tasks such as shopping, managing subscriptions, and completing routine purchases. Mastercard's approach is built around a 'Know Your Agent' trust architecture, designed to address consumer concerns around control and transparency as AI becomes more prevalent in financial services.
Transactions are secured through agentic tokens, which ensure that every payment initiated by an agent, including recurring transactions, operates within the permissions and limits set by the consumer. The system provides visibility into which agent performed the action and where the purchase was made. Alongside the token infrastructure, Mastercard is developing a universal data exchange protocol to support personalisation across agentic commerce interactions at scale, with biometric authentication forming part of the broader consent and control layer.
Positioning in the Ukrainian market
Ukraine has seen considerable adoption of digital payment technologies in recent years, making it a relevant environment for piloting new transaction models. Mastercard has maintained operations in the country for 30 years, and PrivatBank is one of Ukraine's principal retail banking institutions.
Inga Andreieva, Country Manager at Mastercard in Ukraine and Moldova, stated that the transaction reflects principles of trust, transparency, and security that have underpinned Mastercard's work in Ukraine throughout its three-decade presence, and described it as the foundation for a new phase of digital commerce in the country.
In addition, Dmytro Musiienko, Member of the Management Board and Chief Retail Banking Officer at PrivatBank, noted that the bank sees growing potential for AI assistants to help consumers navigate everyday decisions and interact with digital services more efficiently, and confirmed that the bank intends to continue developing agentic commerce use cases alongside Mastercard.
Both organisations have confirmed plans to identify further use cases and scale AI-powered commerce, while maintaining regulatory alignment and operational controls.
