• Key Insight: Mastercard is enhancing its agentic AI bench. 
• What’s at Stake: New forms of technology are changing shopping and payments.
• Forward Look: Visa and other payment firms are aggressively investing in new forms of AI. 

An agentic artificial intelligence arms race is hitting the payments industry, with Mastercard pushing a fresh menu of products designed to rapidly scale the technology before the end of the year. 
The card network has partnered with Stripe, Google and Ant International’s subsidiary Antom business payments firm to scale agentic payments for digital merchants and platforms. Agentic commerce refers to using agentic AI, a form of artificial intelligence that performs tasks such as shopping or payments with minimal or no human supervision. Mastercard, Visa, PayPal and other companies are pursuing agentic AI to enhance merchant services, creating competitive pressure on banks and financial services companies to develop a strategy.  

“If it takes off, agentic commerce could be as incrementally beneficial as the shift from offline to online commerce,” Jeffries analysts said in a research note on Visa and Mastercard’s moves in agentic AI. “The card networks are expected to be the payment mechanism in argentic AI.”

The card networks can establish trust in the new technology by setting rules around liability/disputes and what constitutes a valid agent-initiated transaction, by registering agents and by tokenizing transactions, Jeffries said.

Mastercard’s AI tools

By the start of the holiday shopping period on November 28 (Black Friday), all Mastercard cardholders will be enabled for Mastercard Agent Pay in the U.S., with global deployment “shortly” after. The card network also released Agent Toolkit, which enables AI assistants and agentic tools to access and interpret Mastercard’s application programming interface documentation using the Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, which connects AI applications to other technology systems. The agent toolkit supports integration with AI platforms like Claude, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot, which Mastercard contends will make its APIs “easier to integrate” into agentic technology. MCP also supports the Agent2Agent protocol, according to Mastercard. 

The card brand additionally released Agent Sign-Up, which lets Agent Toolkit users identify agents: and access AI-enabled Mastercard products. Other products are Insight Tokens, which enable security for agentic commerce, and agentic consulting services. 

Citi and U.S. Bank are the first announced bank partners for the expanded AI shopping tools, which will lead to new services for the banks’ Mastercard cardholders.

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Mastercard has made several moves into new forms of AI over the past year. The payment network launched Agent Pay earlier in 2025. The platform expands Mastercard’s existing generative AI technology, which enhances customer service, security and onboarding, generating automated responses to customers. Agent Pay mines the card network’s data and AI tools to help shoppers curate a mix of purchases for an event, aid merchants on supply chain management or help a retailer build a marketing or sales program.

The card network has added partners such as Microsoft and IBM, which is contributing B2B technology, and payment firms like PayPal’s Braintree and Checkout.com for security. Agent Pay’s security and authentication use tokenization, a process that replaces existing account numbers with one-off numbers that make the card useless if stolen. Mastercard is also using Databricks software to train the card network’s gen AI engine to produce responses to users with less human interaction. 

Mastercard did not comment on its AI releases by deadline. 

“AI-powered payments aren’t just a trend — they’re a transformation,” said Craig Vosburg, chief services officer at Mastercard, in a release. “Payments must be native to the agentic experience. We’re building the infrastructure for a new generation of intelligent transactions, where consumers and developers can empower AI agents to act on their behalf with trust, transparency and precision.”

Agents on the way

Among other payment firms, PayPal has advanced its agentic AI strategy to focus on travel shopping and payments as an early use, arguing the mix of search, booking and checkout for travel are a good mix for AI. 

Stripe’s strategy includes tools for agentic AI developers, and Block earlier this year launched a similar developer portal for agentic AI. Stripe and Block focus on small to medium sized businesses that are in the early stages of deployment.In China, Alipay last week integrated its agentic AI payment technology in Luckin Coffee, which supports payments through AI conversations. Consumers can use the Luckin Coffee app to place orders and complete checkout through natural language conversations with Luckin’s AI assistant. 

Avoiding agentic AI threatens banks. If banks and merchants do nothing, agentic commerce disintermediation will erode 8% to 13% of gross merchandise volume within two to three years, according to Crone Consulting. 

“Doing nothing is a self-liquidating strategy that directly transfers value to agentic wallets,” Richard Crone, a payments consultant, told American Banker, saying his firm estimates that banks not participating in agentic payments risk a 5% to 15% decline in new account acquisition, a 5% to 15% increase in dormant and closed accounts, and a 7% to 30% increase in natural age per account.

And Mastercard Agent Pay can go live without merchant acceptance, which differs from most new payment technology, Crone said, adding Mastercard’s technology can bypass traditional onboarding. “This breaks the two-sided network model where both issuers and acquirers had to opt in,” Crone said. 

AI agents control product selection and payment routing, Crone said. “If issuers don’t embed agentic payments inside their apps, they risk invisibility as agent-driven wallets divert spend to other tenders.

“That’s why I call Black Friday, just 74 days away, ‘Disintermediation Day,” Crone said. “Mastercard is signaling: ‘ready or not, we’re launching.'”

More than half of tech companies are considering a complete restructure and / or changing their operating model in response to AI, according to research from the consulting sector.

Looking at responses from consulting clients, research firm Source said that it found the changes had become a priority among the technology, media, and telecoms sector (TMT).

Using the research firm’s database and interviews with 150 clients, Source found that 60 percent of those in the tech sector expect to invest in organizational restructuring in the next 18 months.

“TMT clients remain unconfident, but advances in AI and new technologies are triggering urgent discussions about business restructuring,” the research said.

The study reveals around seven percent growth in global TMT consulting, reaching $8.25 billion. Growth last year was flat at two percent.

Tony Maroulis, principal consultant from Source Global Research, said that while the growth was not as high as in 2022, the market slowdown over the last two years has passed. “To a large extent, the crises and uncertainty faced by companies are factored into planning, and the resulting fiscal caution is gradually giving way to more ambitious investment plans,” he said.

The research showed that while 60 percent of high-tech organizations were looking to restructure, 54 percent were looking to change their target operating model, and 60 percent were considering M&As.

“Some of these changes are likely to be induced by AI (organizational restructuring, digital transformation, and operating model transformation). The M&A plan is likely to be driven by a talent shortage,” the report said.

“It is impossible to hide from the impact of AI. Few organizations – if any – do not have a roadmap for AI implementation, usually with the support of external help.”

Improving tech infrastructure is the most talked-about discussion point for telecoms clients, while media clients are explicitly focusing on using emerging technologies, the research found.

The past year has seen a shake-out at tech companies as they implement AI. For example, Salesforce has slashed 4,000 customer support roles through the application of AI agents.

“I’ve reduced it from 9,000 heads to about 5,000 because I need less heads,” CEO Marc Benioff told the media.

The company said that using Agentforce internally led to a decline in the number of support cases so that it no longer needed to actively backfill support engineer roles. “We’ve successfully redeployed hundreds of employees into other areas like professional services, sales, and customer success,” a Salesforce spokesperson said. ®

In recent years, venture capitalists have navigated a challenging environment for consumer technology investments, marked by diminished returns and a slowdown in blockbuster exits. Funding rounds for apps, gadgets, and digital services that once captivated markets have dwindled, as economic pressures and shifting consumer behaviors favor more conservative bets. This downturn has left many investors searching for the next catalyst to reignite growth.

Yet, a cadre of forward-thinking VCs is pinning their hopes on artificial intelligence as the force that could reverse this trend. By integrating AI into everyday consumer products, they argue, startups can create novel experiences that stand out in a saturated market, potentially leading to the kind of viral adoption seen in the early days of social media.

Emerging Optimism Among Investors
This optimism is echoed in recent analyses, including a report from Business Insider, which highlights how a vocal group of VCs believes AI will transform consumer tech from its current slump. These investors point to AI’s ability to personalize user interactions, automate mundane tasks, and generate content on demand, thereby addressing the fatigue consumers feel toward repetitive apps and hardware.

For instance, AI-driven companions could evolve beyond simple chatbots into sophisticated tools that anticipate needs, such as curating personalized shopping lists or managing daily schedules with uncanny accuracy. This shift, VCs contend, moves consumer tech from passive consumption to active enhancement of daily life, potentially unlocking billions in untapped revenue.

AI’s Role in Revitalizing Sectors
Drawing from insights in a related piece by Business Insider on dating and social apps, investors are betting on AI to tackle societal issues like loneliness by fostering genuine connections through intelligent matching algorithms. Unlike traditional platforms, these AI-infused services could analyze behavioral data to suggest real-world meetups, blending digital and physical worlds in innovative ways.

Moreover, the pressure on AI to deliver economic value is immense, as noted in an Axios article emphasizing the high stakes of massive investments by companies and governments. If AI succeeds in consumer applications, it could stabilize venture capital flows, preventing a broader tech recession.

Challenges and Realistic Expectations
However, not all views are unbridled enthusiasm; some experts warn of hype cycles that could lead to disillusionment. A Business Insider analysis describes AI entering a “meh” era, where initial excitement gives way to practical evaluations, which might ultimately strengthen the technology’s foundation.

VCs like those at Menlo Ventures, as profiled in another Business Insider report, advocate for specialized AI apps that promote human connections, such as multiplayer experiences that bring people together offline. This approach contrasts with past consumer tech failures by focusing on meaningful utility rather than fleeting novelty.

Future Projections and Strategic Bets
Looking ahead, predictions from top VCs in a Business Insider forecast for AI trends suggest that 2025 could see a surge in agentic AI—systems that act autonomously on behalf of users—revitalizing sectors like e-commerce and entertainment. Investors are also eyeing regulatory changes that could ease liquidity, as discussed in a Business Insider overview of 2025 tech trends.

Ultimately, while risks remain, including potential bubbles as flagged in a Business Insider guide on spotting AI overvaluations, the consensus among insiders is that AI represents a pivotal opportunity. By solving real consumer pain points, it could not only end the slump but redefine the industry’s trajectory for years to come, provided startups execute with precision and avoid the pitfalls of overhype.