Mastercard opens early access to AI agent payments following pilots with Coinbase, Base and Cloudflare

Mastercard has begun handing developers early access to Agent Pay for Machines, the payments giant's system for letting autonomous software pay for goods and services. The move follows end-to-end pilots run with Cloudflare, Ant International, BVNK, AIsa, Base and Coinbase, the company said. Developers are being invited to try the underlying APIs and tell Mastercard what capabilities they want added.

The product was first unveiled in June and covers spending controls alongside payment via cards, bank accounts and stablecoins. It remains at pilot stage and has not been released commercially.

How the pilot worked

At Cloudflare Connect, marketing agency Hype handed an AI agent a sample brief: build a campaign for a protein bar launch within a budget Hype had pre-approved. The agent bought social media research from AIsa and commissioned eight campaign images through Cloudflare AI Gateway, executing nine payments across the two suppliers.

Those transactions ran over x402, a protocol incubated by Coinbase that takes its name from the HTTP 402 "Payment Required" status code. It lets websites, APIs and AI agents request and receive payment over blockchain rails or traditional ones. In practice, a merchant replies to a request with an HTTP 402 response, verifies the agent's signed payment voucher, and then delivers the service. Vouchers can be batched and redeemed later instead of settling every transaction individually.

Coinbase Developer Platform provided the wallet infrastructure that funded the agent in the Hype demonstration, while Base served as the onchain settlement network. BVNK, the stablecoin infrastructure firm Mastercard acquired in August, supplied the agent wallet and routed payments and settlement through Mastercard's Global Money Platform, handling both fiat and stablecoins. Sellers can be paid in whichever currency, token or rail they prefer.

"The web gave software a way to communicate. APIs gave software a way to use services. Now AI agents need a way to pay for them," Mastercard said in a statement. "That's what we're building."