Mastercard Aims to Lead AI Agentic Commerce Wave

Mastercard is positioning itself at the forefront of agentic commerce, a trend where AI agents autonomously search and purchase products on behalf of consumers. “AI is changing how commerce happens, and that leads to more transactions for Mastercard,” noted Michael Miebach, Mastercard’s chief executive, early Thursday. He expects the momentum to accelerate as the holiday season approaches, saying “we expect that trend to build” as the holidays arrive.

Agentic Commerce Challenges

While the company sees agentic commerce as a major opportunity, the network faces hurdles in aligning its diverse ecosystem of banks, processors, and merchants. “There’s a lot of patchwork going on here, not everybody’s ready at the same time,” he said. Merchants must be discoverable by AI agents, yet many lack the readiness or technical understanding to support this.

The company launched Agent Suite in January and added Agent Connect in late summer to address these gaps. “But we believe it will take off,” Miebach said. The rollout’s success hinges on third-party payment-service providers, who will equip merchants with both technology and knowledge.

The rise of agentic commerce has sparked debate over whether AI agents should be permitted to make purchases autonomously or remain limited to product discovery. The company emphasizes the need for readiness at the network level, particularly in cybersecurity. These days, “AI is unfortunately in the hands of fraudsters, so now [Mastercard] is in cybersecurity in a major way,” he said, adding that readiness was the goal behind Mastercard’s move to acquire Recorded Future, a provider of risk intelligence, last year for $2.65 billion.

Strategic Acquisitions and Financial Growth

Another key move is the company’s $1.8 billion acquisition of BVNK, a stablecoin-technology platform operating in over 130 countries. The deal closed in August, and Miebach confirmed its strong performance: “We’re very happy [that deal] closed,” Miebach said. “It has been strong out of the gate. It’s a very different mindset coming into Mastercard.” BVNK, described as a “revenue-generating business,” adds to the company’s foothold in digital currency infrastructure.

For the quarter, the company reported $9.81 billion in net revenue, up 14% year-over-year, while net income rose 17% to $4.65 billion. Global gross dollar volume increased 7% to $2.95 trillion, with U.S. volume growing 6% to $867 million. Mastercard and Maestro cards outstanding totaled 3.8 billion for the quarter, up 5% from a year ago.