Artificial intelligence is already shaping the shopping experience with personalized recommendations, but Mastercard’s Agent Pay gives AI a more active role.
For example, a consumer hosting a large event, like a birthday party, could chat with AI about themes and items they need. An AI agent would then shop for those items and provide data on venues and weather conditions. Agent Pay could also suggest the best way to pay—and potentially complete the payment on the user’s behalf.
Mastercard also highlighted the benefits for merchants. Retailers could use Agent Pay to develop more effective loyalty programs that deliver customized benefits, such as recommended products, free delivery, rewards, or discounts.
Resistance to AI Payments
Another commercial use case involves a small business using an AI agent to source items, select payment mechanisms, and manage logistics with an international supplier. The AI Agent could then complete the cross-border purchase using a corporate card token and arrange for delivery.
While both businesses and consumers may accept AI-driven recommendations, entrusting AI agents with payments and other sensitive data is likely to meet resistance—especially in highly regulated industries.
Privacy and reliability concerns remain key reasons why many companies still haven’t fully adopted generative AI, let alone autonomous AI agents. The uncertainty that comes with adopting emerging technologies is why the widescale enterprise impact of AI may still be several years away.
Addressing Security Concerns
Agent Pay will require AI agents to be registered and verified before they can make payments on behalf of consumers.
Novel tokenization technology will keep payments on the platform confidential, according to Mastercard, while all parties involved in the value chain—from consumers to issuers and merchants—will be able to identify transactions carried out by these agents.
Along with this visibility, consumers will have control over what the agent is allowed to purchase on their behalf. Despite these reassurances, fraud risk will likely remain top of mind for users.
As powerful as the technology may be, criminals have been one step ahead in adopting new tech. For example, they have already begun using AI agents to carry out phishing attacks.
To combat fraud, Mastercard noted that it would also deploy AI agents to verify the platform’s customers, using both biometrics and a process designed to identify suspicious transactions.
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