To ensure that bots act as instructed, Mastercard’s new protocol stores permissions that humans grant their AI agents onto a blockchain. As opposed to a private database, this information is accessible to multiple parties that want to verify whether an agent is acting as instructed. Initially, Mastercard chose to log those permissions onto the blockchains Polygon, Solana, and Base, among others, the card company’s spokesperson told Fortune.
“Am I expecting that this is going to be a huge revenue driver for Mastercard next year? No,” said Jorn Lambert, Mastercard’s chief product officer. “Do I think it’ll be a meaningful new addressable market for us over the next five years? I think so.”
While that vision hasn’t yet come to pass—agentic payment volumes are still a fraction of broader commercial flows—companies are still believers that humans will use AI to pay for products and that bots will pay other bots.
For his own part, Mastercard’s Lambert predicted that AI chatbots will eventually sit between a meaningful share of e-commerce transactions. “It’s just easier for consumers to do,” he said. And while he was less certain of whether “machine-to-machine payments” will take off, he said that “too much is happening in that space” for some version of a bot-to-bot ecosystem not to take shape.
Updated, June 10, 2026: Updated Mastercard’s name for the new product as well as blockchains where permissions are stored.
