Mastercard Joins Ant International and Visa on AI Agent Trust Framework

Mastercard, Flybits and Rogers Bank announced Canada's first successful deployment of a landmark agentic commerce transaction involving an AI-powered commerce platform, a card issuer and a payments network. The milestone, issued by Mastercard Canada over PR Newswire, builds on Mastercard's global Agent Pay framework for trusted, interoperable and secure agentic commerce. As part of the initiative, a Flybits-powered AI assistant acted on instructions set by a Rogers Red credit card cardholder to identify an eligible product within the specified budget and complete the purchase using Mastercard Agent Pay, operating within validated consumer instructions and predefined spending limits. New Mastercard research conducted in August 2026 among 2,000 Canadian adults found that 41% are open to using AI assistants to help them shop online, and 53% of those with positive feelings toward AI shopping assistants are open to AI-assisted purchasing within pre-set preferences and budget limits. Craig Reiff, Senior Vice President, Core Payments, Mastercard, Canada, said trust will determine how quickly these experiences scale, while Rogers Bank CEO Nick Bednarz said the collaboration shows how AI technology can simplify commerce while preserving the security, transparency and control consumers expect. Flybits provided the agentic intelligence and explainability layer, and in future phases plans to incorporate Mastercard Insight Tokens, a secure and governed way for AI agents to access and apply permissioned insights with consumer consent.

Walmart's decision to accept Apple Pay and Google Pay after a long holdout is a major coup for mobile wallets and a wake-up call for banks, according to American Banker. Ed Dean, vice president of product at Nuvei, said even a retailer with Walmart's scale to promote its own payment experience has recognized the value of accepting the methods customers already use, warning that banks, merchants, and payment providers that fail to support those preferences risk losing transaction volume and everyday relevance. A recent report from Worldpay found that digital wallets in the U.S. represent 40% of online transaction value and 17% of in-store point-of-sale value, underscoring where the trend is headed. Prashant Shah, vice president of product management at SoFi Tech Solutions, said banks may still hold the primary financial relationship, but the battle is now over payment primacy, noting that if a bank's card isn't the one the customer actually uses, it loses spend and interchange to another issuer even if the checking account stays put. Tony DeSanctis, vice president at Cornerstone Advisors, told American Banker that community banks have largely neglected mobile wallet usage for years and large banks also haven't been on top of things, citing a generational lack of understanding of mobile wallets' ubiquity among younger consumers. A 2026 report from Pulse found that 17% of all debit transactions were initiated through a mobile wallet, with 11.7 card-not-present transactions a month, up 8.3% from the previous year, and 19.7 monthly card-present transactions, up 0.2% from a year earlier.