Mastercard has partnered with Google to join its new Universal Commerce Protocol, an open protocol that enables interoperability between AI agents and merchants.
These protocols are essential to growing the adoption of agentic commerce. This is why Mastercard further partners across the value chain with Google’s Agent Payment Protocol and Agent2Agent Protocol, OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol, and more. This ensures that these platforms meet the same high standards for clear user intent, secure credentials, and verifiable agent identity.
Supporting AI-powered commerce
The protocols aim to protect merchants from fraud with transparency and improved authentication for issuers, delivering convenience for customers without adding unnecessary friction. This makes payments more personal with personalised, real-time experiences.
Mastercard’s tools are powered by these principles, with the company launching Mastercard Agent Pay in 2025 to provide smarter and more secure payments for its clients, merchants, and issuers. Now, it is working to bring the solution to Copilot Checkout, further working with OpenAI, PayPal, and Cloudflare to advance secure agentic commerce solutions.
Additionally, Mastercard expanded Start Path, its startup engagement programme, to advance AI commerce adoption and ensure that its network supports rapid growth. Since 2014, Start Path supported 500 companies across 60 countries, including AI platforms. Next-gen technology companies enabling agentic transactions and commerce ecosystems can leverage a wider range of benefits through this programme and access customised solutions and collaborations.
Mastercard believe that the next wave of digital commerce is agentic, where AI supports companies and consumers discover, compare, and complete purchases. The company aims to support the adoption of these emerging solutions, as intelligent agents can accelerate commerce, especially if their foundation is reliable, secure, and understood universally. Mastercard plans to bring forth the partnership and capabilities that allow development to move fast without compromising coordination.
