Mastercard, Visa race to set standards for AI agent shopping payments

Partior, which operates a blockchain-based payment network, announced on the 17th a partnership with LSEG DiSH, the settlement infrastructure arm of London Stock Exchange Group, to bring always-on settlement bank liquidity to international remittance networks. Partior is a blockchain-based interbank clearing and settlement network jointly founded in 2021 by JPMorgan, DBS Bank, and Temasek, with JPMorgan participating as one of its founding shareholders. Under the new framework, the two sides are developing a Multi Settlement Bank solution that combines LSEG DiSH's omnibus trust account with Partior's multi-currency clearing and settlement network, enabling 24/7 liquidity movement among multiple settlement banks. The aim is to reduce the need to pre-fund nostro and vostro accounts and to lessen reliance on remittance cut-off times. Partior, LSEG, and participating banks are currently conducting cross-industry testing and are preparing for a production launch in the first quarter of 2027 and for accepting additional settlement banks into the framework. Founding shareholder Standard Chartered and participating banks such as Deutsche Bank have also expressed their participation in the framework, with an eye toward future feature expansions such as intraday foreign exchange trading and securities settlement.

Europe has moved agentic payments into live production while the United States remains stalled over who bears the loss when an AI agent errs. Live end-to-end payments have been executed by Santander, Mastercard, ING, and Worldline, and on July 2, 2026, ING, Worldline, and Visa completed an agentic payment in Germany using Visa Payment Passkeys for biometric authentication. Mastercard has enabled all issuers in Europe at the network level for Agent Pay, backed by a new Lisbon Centre of Excellence for Innovation, with Mastercard Europe President Kelly Devine calling agentic payments a profound shift in how commerce is initiated and executed. In the US, the Treasury OIG has flagged ambiguity in Regulation E on agent authorization, and the AI AGENT Act introduced in July 2026 addresses fiduciary duties rather than liability allocation for agent misexecution, prompting the Consumer Bankers Association to recommend the industry write its own private network rules. Hypertrade data shows a 4,700% year-over-year increase in AI-generated traffic to retail sites, yet agentic commerce is less than 1% of US e-commerce, with only 23% of US consumers trusting generative AI to handle payment transactions and 93% of merchants saying the AI provider should bear the financial loss for incorrect purchases.

Alchemy has turned its agent-payment framework into a live developer product called AgentCard, giving AI software agents single-use Mastercard credentials tied to a customer's existing account rather than permanent access to a payment card. Developers can set spending caps, limit eligible merchants and restrict transactions geographically, while users keep their existing rewards and credit arrangements. Alchemy says the service is already available, letting autonomous agents buy goods anywhere Mastercard is accepted online. Mastercard shares were nearly flat at $566.285 Friday morning, and the chart puts the stock 17.09% below a GF Value estimate of $683. Neither company has disclosed pricing, transaction volumes or committed customers yet.