Citi and US Bank Mastercard cardholders will be the first to access Mastercard’s new Agent Pay technology, ahead of a wider U.S. launch during the holiday season and a subsequent global rollout. Introduced in April, Agent Pay is Mastercard’s entry into the emerging agentic payments space, allowing AI agents to handle shopping and payment tasks on behalf of users.

Mastercard showcased the technology with an example of a customer planning a birthday party: an AI agent curates outfits and accessories from local and online stores based on style preferences, venue, and weather, makes purchases, and recommends optimal payment methods. To support developers, Mastercard has also released an Agent Toolkit to help AI assistants access and interpret its API documentation.

“AI-powered payments aren’t just a trend — they’re a transformation,” said Craig Vosburg, Mastercard’s Chief Services Officer. He emphasized that the company is building the infrastructure for intelligent, agent-driven transactions that give consumers and developers the ability to empower AI agents to act with trust, transparency, and precision.