Mastercard announced the launch of Agent Connect on September 9, 2026. The new service is specifically designed to provide merchants with a single integration path covering the entire journey from product discovery and cart creation to checkout on artificial intelligence platforms.
The rollout reduces infrastructure hurdles that often complicate the adoption of automated technology for retailers.
Eliminating the Burden of Separate Connections
With Agent Connect, merchants can fully participate in the AI-assisted shopping ecosystem without needing to build separate technical connections for every AI platform on the market. The product serves as an integral part of the Mastercard Agent Suite for Merchants, which combines conventional shopping services with AI payment processing.
To power its language processing capabilities, Mastercard partnered with Anthropic. The collaboration provides merchants with access to a commercial agent blueprint that pairs Claude model capabilities with Mastercard payment settlement. Although machines handle the initial stages of interaction, customers retain final control over their purchases, as the system does not permit automated transactions without user approval.
Autonomous Transactions and Stablecoin Rails
The launch of Agent Connect follows a rollout in June for the Agent Pay for Machines service. That initial infrastructure received backing from major players including Ripple, Coinbase, Stripe, Adyen, Cloudflare, OKX, Solana Foundation, and more than 30 other companies.
Agent Pay for Machines is designed to execute high-frequency microtransactions initiated by autonomous software. Given the heavy volume profile of machine transactions, the system enables payment execution via standard banking networks as well as stablecoin rails.
Mastercard Chief Product Officer Jorn Lambert stated that AI agents will transform the purchasing interface once again. Furthermore, this interface evolution is not just a shift in on-screen catalog displays, but a direct synchronization between machine-generated orders and cross-border transaction settlement rails. Reported by crypto.news.
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