--- --- Apr 30, 2026 # Mastercard Securing AI shopping by [Chris Stokel-Walker](https://time.com/author/chris-stokel-walker/) ## Chris Stokel-Walker  Courtesy Mastercard Mastercard has spent decades making humans’ credit card payments secure. Now it’s doing the same for purchases made by machines. As AI agents move from suggesting products to buying them on a users’ behalf, the payments giant—which processed $10.6 trillion of payments last year—is racing to ensure those orders are as trustworthy as the ones you place yourself. Its [Agent Pay](https://www.mastercard.com/global/en/news-and-trends/press/2025/april/mastercard-unveils-agent-pay-pioneering-agentic-payments-technology-to-power-commerce-in-the-age-of-ai.html) program, launched in April 2025, requires AI agents to be registered and verified before they can spend your money, extending the fraud protections and dispute rights of card payments to purchases made inside AI assistants. “It’s incredibly important that we get this right, because it only takes a few bad stories for the whole house of cards to start collapsing,” says chief product officer Jorn Lambert. (Translation: no one wants an agent going on a shopping spree with their Mastercard.) [PayPal](https://newsroom.paypal-corp.com/2025-10-27-Mastercard-and-PayPal-Join-Forces-To-Accelerate-Secure-Global-Agentic-Commerce), Microsoft, and Google have already signed on as Agent Pay partners, and Mastercard is pushing into [stablecoin settlement](https://www.mastercard.com/news/press/2025/april/mastercard-unveils-end-to-end-capabilities-to-power-stablecoin-transactions-from-wallets-to-checkouts/) for cross-border payments—what Lambert calls “a significant opportunity for reducing friction.” Mastercard: 2026 TIME100 Most Influential Companies ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collection/time100-most-influential-companies/2026/mastercard/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collection/time100-most-influential-companies/2026/mastercard/"},"headline":"Mastercard","datePublished":"2026-04-30T13:50:55.445Z","dateModified":"2026-05-12T07:03:05.754Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/collection/time100-most-influential-companies/2026/mastercard/","keywords":["TIME100 Companies","franchise","list"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt53c655c263e33785/69ea37df4bdd671a0f5d5ec0/time100-companies-2026-mastercard.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Chris Stokel-Walker","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/chris-stokel-walker/"}],"creator":"Chris Stokel-Walker","articleSection":"Business","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt53c655c263e33785/69ea37df4bdd671a0f5d5ec0/time100-companies-2026-mastercard.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/business/","name":"Business"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collection/time100-most-influential-companies/2026/mastercard/","name":"Mastercard"}}]}] ```