BAKU, Azerbaijan, October 2. Mastercard expects AI agents to increasingly make payments on behalf of consumers based on their intent, while users will retain control by setting boundaries for transactions, Onur Doğan, Senior Vice President of Services Business Development at Mastercard, said at the AI & Digital Bridge 2026 forum in Astana.
“We will have the autopilot with the agents,” Doğan said, comparing the future of AI-powered payments with autonomous driving.
He said Mastercard has developed its next-generation Agent Pay platform, which can search for products, compare them, and, based on the consumer’s intent, complete transactions on the consumer’s behalf.
“So our goal at Mastercard is also to provide a trusted and secure environment, especially so that the consumer will have the trust to give control within the defined boundaries,” Doğan said.
He noted that AI agents will not have unlimited authority to make purchases or other transactions.
“But we are in the control seat. We are in the driving seat, and we are also defining the boundaries so that the agent, for example, on Mastercard, will take all the transactions on your behalf based on your intent,” he said.
According to Doğan, trust is currently the main issue in the development of agentic payments, as consumers need to be confident enough to allow AI agents to spend money on their behalf.
He also said AI is changing Mastercard’s payment infrastructure, with the company moving toward what he described as a “smart payment network” capable of understanding intent and context, predicting risks, and supporting decision-making across the network.
Doğan identified fraud and identity, consumer intent and context, and payment infrastructure as three key areas being transformed by AI.
